Page 46 - The Hunt - Summer 2024

The Artof Preservation Consumed by the natural beauty
of Stroud Preserve, Chester County
artist Gregory Blue comes away
with his most sublime work.
BY J.F. PIRRO
PHOTOS BY JIM GRAHAM
Stroud Preserve was a convenient place for Gregory Blue’s life to turn a corner, as it lies only three miles from his home in West Chester. He’d be in his backyard or studio, track a moving weather front and arrive at the preserve in time to paint it. “But I didn’t know it was going to turn into this,” he says.
Blue spent almost seven years at Stroud Preserve, Natural Lands’ 571-acre mosaic of nature, painting plein air in sessions that lasted up to two hours. He’d create small abstracts to capture color and light—
two essential components in his work—then expand on them later
in the studio. All that work resulted in Landscapes of Stroud Preserve, Gregory Blue, and the Art of Preservation. The initial installation ran this past November at the Chester County Art Association. Blue’s first true exhibition in two decades, it featured 59 pieces. A more compact version just wrapped up at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia.
44 THE HUNT MAGAZINE summer 2024