Page 51 - The Hunt - Summer 2024

Blue sees Stroud Preserve as his “partner on the path” to reconnecting with the natural world. For him, Stroud is a place to think and to feel at home—“a haven for my imagination.”
In 1944, at age 20, Doris Blue enlisted in the U.S. Navy to help with the war effort. She was staunchly independent, and she impressed the same on her son. She knew Gregory could draw, and both of his parents supported that. For financial security, H.C. “Bus” Blue urged his son to major in commercial illustration in art school. When his father died in Blue’s first year at the now- defunct Art Institute of York, he switched to painting. “I’ve painted ever since,” he says.
In the late 1980s, Blue moved to New Hope, where he painted plein air along the towpath of the Delaware Canal and River.
“I felt as though I was walking in the footsteps of the [Pennsylvania] Impressionists—the Walter E. Baums, the kindred spirits of a bygone era,” Blue recalls.
By 1991, he moved to Villanova to
cut down on his first wife’s commute,
start a family and work full time, largely
in commercial graphic design with an environmental focus—what’s now referred
to as experience design. So close to Wyeth Country, Blue couldn’t resist moves to Chester Springs in 1995 and finally
West Chester, where he now paints behind his home in a garage studio. “There’s such a rich cultural and art heritage, and I’m happy to surround myself with it,” Blue says. “There’s certainly been grist for my mill here.”
Fully immersed in the local scene,
Blue is among the 70 or so artists who open their studios each May for the celebrated Chester County Studio Tour. On one
of those weekends six years ago, James
Fairburn discovered Blue’s art. Today, he owns five of his paintings. The first was a small Brandywine Creek winter scene, flush with pinks and reds. Fairburn is attracted to Blue’s use of color and the way he captures a time of day. “There’s something very specific about it,” Fairburn says. “Half the painting can be in deep shadows, then there’s a blast
of light passing through a horizontal plane so you know there are trees there. It’s endlessly fascinating that he can take a setting and work with it in an infinite number of ways.”
Even Blue doesn’t totally understand
how he does it. The dual result of persistence and practice, it’s what he’s always striving for. “I’m pleased to be a vessel for it, but I’m damned to explain it,” he says.
Visit gregoryblue.com and natlands.org.
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