A painter's skill, creating beauty on and below the surface

MEREDITH — If a piece of art is any good, there’s a message behind it. The message behind any of Rob Emory’s pieces could be, “This world is beautiful, let’s not screw it up.”

Emory, who lives on Oak Island, off of Meredith Neck, has been painting for about six decades. His will be among the work exhibited in the Lakes Region Art Association’s 79th Annual Member Show, which is currently underway at the association’s gallery at the Tanger Outlet Mall in Tilton.

Emory, 74, started painting when he was a high schooler growing up in Pennsylvania. He briefly studied business at Ithaca College, then realized that was a mistake and switched to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, for a degree in industrial design.

He ended up not using that degree, either. Instead, he found a career as a teacher, first in Worcester, Massachusetts, then at Friends Central School, a Quaker middle and senior high school in a suburb of Philadelphia. He taught there for more than 30 years, leading classes in art, photography, woodworking and stage craft.

He uses many of those skills today, though he retired from teaching several years ago and is now living year-round on Oak Island. He and his wife, Susan, make daily kayak ventures onto the lake, or off the coast of Maine, and Emory brings his camera. He uses his Canon to capture images. Some of his photographs are printed and framed, while the rest he mines for inspiration for his paintings.

Emory said he is a “strong environmentalist,” and he hopes his paintings cause viewers to consider the wellbeing of the scene he’s portraying.

“I’m capturing a moment out of time. What I’m seeing is something that I’m hoping that my grandchildren will see, without overdevelopment or pollution,” Emory said.

While he photographs many images, the scenes he chooses to paint are those he has visited several times, which he knows from many angles. Emory’s style is realist, and many of his paintings depict scenes that could have occurred last week, or a half-century ago: a wooden cruiser parked at a dock in front of a classic lakeside cabin; lobster boats departing a harbor in the purple-gray pre-dawn light; a close-up of a butterfly wing.

Emory’s studio is stuffed with paintings – after he finishes a piece, he uses his woodworking skills to make a frame – and he said he shows his work in the Art Association’s gallery, and in the annual show, as a way to make space for more paintings.

Emory first came to Winnipesaukee in 1968, to work at a summer camp in Wolfeboro. He was in college at the time, and it was that summer that he re-connected with Susan. They had attended the same high school in Pennsylvania, and her family already had a tradition of summering on Meredith Neck. Rob and Susan had an off-again, on-again romance in their teens, but in 1969, when Rob graduated from college, they married. The house they live in now was once owned by Susan’s parents. Now, it is filled with Rob’s paintings, and, often, his and Susan’s grandchildren.

Emory’s artwork is pleasing to the eye, yet he sees a depth beyond the surface. A honeybee on a blossom reminds the viewer of the delicate dance between flora and fauna. A portrait of a grandchild may represent a bit more – a descendant of Emory’s grandmother, who struggled to raise her family after her husband was killed in World War I.

“Everything we look at has an inner beauty to it, you’ve only got to look at it long enough to find it for yourself,” he said.