If you’ve ever taken a walk through Bringhurst Woods or the Gardens at Gibraltar in Wilmington sometime in the last 20 years, there’s a chance you would have come across local artists Nancy Carol Willis and Marjorie Egee sitting on a rock sketching the luscious landscapes around them. Those landscapes will now come to life at the Gilbert W. Perry Center For the Arts when the artists present “Reflections on a Creek and other Landscapes,” which will be on display throughout the month of June.
Nancy Carol Willis of Middletown and Marjorie Egee of Wilmington have been friends for more than 20 years, and their love for art and nature has only allowed their friendship to grow stronger.
While the women have spent many days painting and sketching together in some of Delaware’s beautiful parks and gardens, many of those works have never been seen by the general public. But that will all change when Willis and Egee come together for “Reflections on a Creek and other Landscapes.”
“It’s going to be a fun show for us because we’re both getting to do some different things,” Egee said. “These are going to be images that are unfamiliar to people who know our work.”
Egee said much of the pieces on display were created in Shellpot Creek, which is located in Bringhurst Woods Park in Wilmington.
“The range of work is going to be unexpected,” she said. “We’re showing a lot of small work and sketches, and we’re showing work we’ve done on location.”
Willis said while many of the pieces are of larger landscapes, such as Shellpot Creek, others are more close-up.
“The term landscape is a very general term,” she said. “It could be an intimate view of the flowers in [Egee’s] garden, an intimate view of barn flowers in a nest or even yellow iris in a marsh.”
The exhibit will include approximately 75 pieces between both artists, and viewers can expect to see a wide range of media used. Egee and Willis will show work in oil pastels, colored pencil, watercolor, reed pen, brush & ink, and encaustic mediums.
“It’s nice to see an artist stretching themselves and trying new things,” Egee said. “We always try to do that, and this is an opportunity to show some of that.”
Egee said she has always enjoyed having Willis as a friend and working with her professionally.
“There’s this camaraderie between us,” she said. “Nancy always gives me wonderful feedback on my composition, and we have fun together.”
Willis said she hopes viewers really take in the scenes she and Egee have portrayed on the canvas and picture them at these scenes painting.
“For the artist creating the work, it’s a process or a performance,” she said. “We enjoy doing it and then we enjoy sharing it with others.”
