Capturing a Squam childhood
By Laura Raskin
Independent Arts Writer

"I was mesmerized by the concept that you could put a body of work together and put it up and have people come to see it. It really inspired me to stay here in Nantucket.Independent Arts Writer

The inspiration for Katie Trinkle Legge's fifth annual summer show at the Old Spouter Gallery comes from saying goodbye.

The last vestige of Legge's childhood on Nantucket - the Squam summer home of her grandparents' friends Ethel and Rudolf Bolling - will be sold by their grandchildren. It was there and in her grandparents' home, under the tutelage of an architect grandfather, that Legge honed her drawing skills and whiled away summer hours.

Many of her oil paintings in the show that will open on Friday, July 8, are views from inside the Bolling's home Fair Winds, which she entered with her own copy of the key.

"This house is going to change," said Legge. "I went in there wanting to capture the interiors because I know how things change. It's where I used to go as a kid."

The modest cottages that dotted the shore are disappearing and details in Fair Winds like floorboards that came from ship, planks may not be preserved. Legge painted Ethel's old chair and the view out of the Bolling's kitchen window.

Legge is known for her large, popping still lifes and incorporated some of that on a smaller scale in the paintings from inside Fair Winds, which inspired her to go back to other objects that dotted her childhood on the island.

"I've always chosen objects from antique stores or ones that have a lot of personal meaning, but this year I really focused on things that are Squam memories," she said, including a horse, which represents the one she used to walk down the road and feed as a child.

Legge has lived on the island year-round since 1990, when she had to say goodbye to her own grandparents' 1950s home in Squam after her parents died. But letting go meant she got to stay here.

"I bought another piece of land in Quidnet," said Legge. She lives there with her husband Darren Legge and their third-grade son Jake. "I've evolved here as an artist."

When Legge came to the island in 1988 after graduating from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, she had a show at the Sherburne Gallery on Main Street. She admired the island artist Sherre Wilson Rae at the time. Wilson Rae had a show at the Main Street Gallery.

"I was mesmerized by the concept that you could put a body of work together and put it up and have people come to see it," said Legge. "It really inspired me to stay here in Nantucket. I realized there was a healthy arts scene here. I was influenced by her color and very attracted by her work."

Legge, president of the Artists' Association of Nantucket, has two shows of her work a year, one at the Old Spouter and one at the Left Bank Gallery in Wellfleet, Mass.

"I find I can only make so many paintings a year. Every one is personal to me. I can't just produce them," she said, struggling to describe her style.

"When I tell people I do still lifes, they imagine a skull and a book and say, 'Oh.' I have a really hard time describing my work. A lot of time, the objects are larger than life," she said.

She has been moving into the realm of landscapes, using the same rich color palette as her still lifes, but enjoying the freedom.

Legge credits her grandfather Joseph Mink with fostering her early drawing abilities. He was an architect with Eggers and Higgins Architects in New York, designing interiors of ships and shipyards with a specialty in very tiny kitchens.

"When he designed my parents house in New York, he designed our kitchen too small," she said.

When "Rudy" Bolling coaxed his friend Mink out to the island, "it was like a swamp," she said. Her grandfather built a small house next to that of his friends and named it Dawn's Light. It still exists - as a guest cottage of a much larger home.

Mink was an excellent draftsman, recalled Legge. He knew perspective and corrected her ellipses and depth. He understood the finesse of a pencil, the difference its weight made.

Legge sketched on the beach and began painting at 12, she said.

Because of the lessons and, maybe, the genes of her grandfather, Legge doesn't struggle so much with technique.

"If you're comfortable with the materials, it allows you to be more experimental," she said.