Sarah Daughn has been making art nearly her whole life.
The Boston-born painter received a bachelor of fine arts degree at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now teaches art at the Wheeler School in Providence.
She moved to Dartmouth just under two decades ago after looking for a place to retire.
“It was just like a railroad car ranch, and the site is just so unbelievable,” she said. “It’s gorgeous. Watching storms and things in the winter is pretty spectacular.”
Viewing the landscape from her glass-fronted house gave Daughn the inspiration to change the themes of her artwork.
Earlier pieces, now framed under glass and hanging above the more recent landscapes, show figures in urban environments peering into glass shop fronts and other reflective surfaces.
“I was focusing on reflections,” she said, adding that the less abstract scenes allowed her to hone her craft.
But after moving to Russells Mills, Daughn started on abstract landscapes.
Some of the pieces take two weeks, while some take as long as two years to complete.
“Oil has to dry if you want to change anything,” she noted.
And although she draws her inspiration from the Slocum River and nearby beaches in Westport, she invents most of the landscapes she paints in her head.
“They’re just abstract water views,” she said. “I did a lot of practice realistic scenes before I dove into all this…[But] this is all from my head.”