Artist Profile – Michael Lenihan
Michael Lenihan took up oil painting as a pastime at the age of 48 and has been painting landscapes steadily since he began studying in the Newburyport studio of Robert Scott Jackson, a Copley master painter. Michael is a native of Nova Scotia and moved with his family as a child to the village of Garden City, a suburb of New York City on Long Island. He lived and worked in the New York area until moving his own family to North Andover in the mid 1990’s. Michael and his wife Barbara have three grown children and three grandchildren.
Michael paints in the academic method and his paintings frequently depict landscapes and seascapes where you experience a sense of relaxation, depth and light. He has painted scenes from the Grand Tetons and the Maroon Bells to the Wolman Rink in Central Park to Peggy’s Cove lighthouse in Nova Scotia, to the Grand Canal in Venice. Many of his paintings are of scenes on Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod, the Maine coast, the Pocono Mountains as well as the shoreline of Long Island. He recruits his friends to send him their favorite photos from which he finds frequent inspiration. He will gladly entertain doing commissioned work and can be reached at mlenihan@comcast.net
In addition to numerous private collections, his paintings are held in several corporate collections throughout the northeast United States. Michael frequently donates his paintings to favorite causes of his family including North Andover’s Hermann Youth Center, the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, Swim Across America/Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the Brain Tumor Foundation at Newton Wellesley Hospital, Andover Chamber Music, the North Shore Artist League, and the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans, among others.
He has found that painting has provided him with an enhanced awareness and appreciation of the ever changing physical world around us all and which he admits he took for granted prior to his putting brush to canvas.
WEBSITE: Michael Lenihan Fine Art, at www.mlenihan.faso.com
Artist Profile – Laura Minning
Laura Minning began writing creatively at the age of nine. She’s become an award winning published poet and author since that time. All in all, she’s written one-hundred and seven individual poems, six articles, two books and one short one-act play, published in both hard copy and online. Her work has been featured in the publications, Literature Today, Amulet Magazine and Slate & Style. Laura received her first Editor’s Choice Award in 1993 for “bronx zoo” and her first international poetry award in 1995 for “introspection” by the National Library of Poetry. Poetry.com recognized her work a decade later by granting her the title of International Poet of the Year. Laura’s artistic accomplishments are equally impressive. She’s had eighty-two original pieces exhibited and eleven published. Her work has been displayed in venues like the VMFA Studio School, Haverhill Public Library and Barcode. The Barcode exhibit, sponsored by Bacardi, featured thirty-six pieces of Laura’s artwork during the month of February in 2016. Additional information about Laura and her work can be found at http://bluerosecreations.wix.com/bluerose. As a person with low vision and blindness, Laura hopes to inspire other creative people to never allow anything to hinder them from reaching for the stars and accomplishing their dreams If you were to ask her about her creative successes, she would tell you that the difficult is but the work of the moment, and the impossible takes a little longer.