Found Art: The Long View
Painter Wendy Prellwitz recalls a childhood memory. —By Sydney Wertheim
Photograph by Chris Yeager
Wendy Prellwitz’s fascination with water dates back to her childhood, when she would visit her great-grandparents’ Long Island home. In her piece Opening, the Cambridge-based artist depicts a view from the house that she remembers well: the waves of Little Peconic Bay, framed by a doorway. “I started painting the interiors of that house, and that particular spot always interested me,” Prellwitz says.
Finding inspiration in this vantage point is something of a family trait. Prellwitz’s great-grandmother Edith (a noted late-19th-century painter) used it to create her circa-1915 work The Open Door. More than 100 years later, Prellwitz has taken a more abstract approach.
“I do kind of have the ghost of my great-grandparents around,” Prellwitz says. “I like that they looked at the same water and saw the same moon rising, the same midday sun.”
Opening, acrylic and silkscreen on panel, $4,000, wendyprellwitz.com.
