Artist Kathleen Horst’s art show, entitled “Painting Damariscotta and the Midcoast,” is currently at the Hall Gallery at the Miles Memorial Hospital in Damariscotta. The show runs until Friday, Sept. 9.

A visitor to the Midcoast for 20 years and now a permanent resident, Kathleen Horst has turned to Damariscotta’s quaint buildings and businesses for inspiration as well as the traditional midcoast scenery. She is a watercolorist, specializing in painting portraits of houses, cottages, businesses and boats. Her work has expanded to include paintings of Damariscotta’s downtown architecture and beloved destinations. One enthusiastic visitor to this show commented, “It’s like a walk down Main Street!”

Said Horst, “It is the landscape’s natural beauty that catches my attention.  The ocean changing color with the sky, the forests of lush earth colors, a hillside of spring flowers, or a well-loved home with a colorful garden entices me to paint.”

Kathleen Horst grew up in Florida where she developed a love of nature's luxurious colors and then moved to Macon, Georgia. She comments, “I was drawn to the beauty of Macon's historic architecture as well as its lush, intensely colored gardens.”

Her first artistic endeavors were in ceramics. She was a studio potter for 20 years and sold her creations at art shows around the southeast from Coconut Grove, Florida, to Nashville, Tennessee. She then began making raised relief tiles of client’s homes, which became an easy transition to the house portrait part of her watercolor business.

“The drama that I want to showcase in my artwork includes the lines, styles and history of homes and buildings. It may be a Victorian mansion with filigreed trim or a rustic cottage by the sea that inspires me to include them into a scene. Nature and architecture combine to become extensions and complements of each other,” Horst continued.

Horst is a guest artist of the Pemaquid Group of Artists, and is a Signature Member of the Bristol Road Galleries in Damariscotta. The Kathleen Horst Studio Gallery is open afternoons or by chance or appointment, at 179 Bristol Road, Damariscotta.

All works in Horsts show are for sale, with a portion of each sale supporting Miles Memorial Hospital. To visit her show at the hospital, go to Miles Memorial Hospital at 35 Miles Street, approximately .6 miles from the heart of downtown Damariscotta.

For more information about Kathleen Horst’s work, visit www.houseportraitsbykathleen.com and www.houseportraitsbykathleen.com.