Opening Party for Osborn & Rugh Gallery

Hillary Osborn and Doug Rugh will celebrate their move to new studio/gallery space in Queen’s Buyway, 114 Palmer Avenue, in Falmouth, with an opening party on Saturday, November 29, from 2 to 6 PM. The artists, who are husband and wife, have been painting full time since 1999. Their studios were formerly at the Cataumet Arts Center studios, in Cataumet, but the new space better fits their current needs.
“When we heard about the building at the corner of Queen’s Buyway, we just had to take it,” said Mr. Rugh. “With those large old windows along both sides it makes a great natural light studio. It’s also a charming part of town at the entrance to the historic area of Falmouth and the Village Green. Plus with all the shops and the inns in that immediate area—Coffee O, the bike shop, the gift shops and the antique shop, we couldn’t resist. I see people going by with their musical instruments to Johnson String next door—it just seemed a perfect fit for us.”
Ms. Osborn added, “It’s a stimulating new environment for us. We see all the activity going by out the window and it’s like we’ve moved to the city. As artists, it’s important to have change to keep our work fresh.”
The artists enjoy having people come in and visit. Sometimes people think they are disturbing artists when they come to visit, but Mr. Rugh said that, for them, that is not the case. He can talk and paint at the same time, he said, and he feels it is important for people to see how paintings are created. There are many intermediate steps in painting, and people miss something by only seeing the finished painting. Landscapes, for instance, can change a bit from day to day while the artist is working on them, as the weather, the lighting, and the composition changes. Both Mr. Rugh and Ms. Osborn work in oils, finding it a very flexible medium.
At their studios at the Cataumet Arts Center, the artists found that people would rather visit an art studio than an art gallery. “They want to see the artist in the process of painting, bringing the illusion to life,” said Mr. Rugh. “They come back again and again and they bring houseguests or they send their friends—we count on that word-of-mouth. We like that we can be a cultural attraction, and it doesn’t surprise me that people will come quite a distance if they’re interested in art and make a day trip out of it. We do it ourselves.”
Both artists work on location as much as they can, painting from life, rather than from photographs. In good weather, they paint smaller works in the field, working quickly, studying, observing, and recording what they see. These paintings are, according to Mr. Rugh, “reportage,” records of what the artists see.
Over the winter, they work on larger paintings in the studio, often based on the smaller paintings that they have painted in the field. The larger paintings tend to be more artistic and reflective, as they modify composition and expression. Both Mr. Rugh and Ms. Osborn are realistic painters, but they do keep changing and experimenting.
“It is so easy,” said Mr. Rugh, “to fall into a trap of finding out what the market wants,” instead of what the artist might want to paint. In contrast to the commercial approach, he said, “we feel that, if we’re excited about what we’re painting, other people will be, too.
Ms. Osborn focuses on Cape Cod landscapes, while Mr. Rugh paints both portraits and landscapes. The couple met at a figure painting session at the Falmouth Artists Guild, back when it was at their former building on East Main Street, near the police station. While they do not consciously try to imitate each other’s art or paint in similar styles, they are inspired by each other’s work.
They alternate their time in the studio; while one is working on art, the other stays home with their two young children. “When you walk into the studio and there’s a new painting on the easel that has a clever composition or an interesting color harmony, you learn from it.” said Mr. Rugh.
Ms. Osborn said that when the two paint at the same locations, “Doug comes back with a new perspective on a landscape and that makes me see it in a whole new way.”
Ms. Osborn is a Cape Cod native whose great-great-grandfather operated a whaling fleet in Edgartown. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she concentrated on urban landscapes.
Mr. Rugh was born in Berlin and spent his childhood in the Middle East. As a teenager he apprenticed to ceramic and woodworking artisans in Cairo, Egypt, and was involved with the arts at the Putney School in Vermont. He attended the Maryland Institute College of Art before studying at the Schuler School of Fine Arts in Baltimore, an atelier that specializes in materials and methods of the old masters. He worked as a scientific illustrator at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, where both of his grandfathers did research. He completed his BFA in 1994 at the Rhode Island School of Design with honors. In 2006 the Copley Society, whose roster of artists include John Singer Sargent, Homer, Whistler, and Corot, awarded Rugh the distinction of “Copley Master,” after he won five major awards in juried shows with work in portraiture, still-life, and landscape painting.