The Franklin Gallery, located at 33 North Main Street in Rochester, will host an exhibit throughout November titled The Beauty of Nature, featuring work by New Hampshire North Country artist Sarah Eastman.

From her earliest memories, award-winning artist Sarah Eastman has loved all things visual. Her first art teacher taught her to carefully observe each subject before putting pencil to paper, a lesson that served her well in her future as an artist and art educator.

Eastman earned a BA in art history in college while taking fine arts classes whenever she could. In 1976, she began a full-time career in secondary art education, which she pursued for the next 39 years. Now retired since 2015, she devotes her time to her two artistic passions: pastel and watercolor painting.

“Being outdoors brings visual excitement every day, with constantly changing beauty in the shapes, colors, textures, and light that nature provides,” says Eastman. “I consider the contemplation of nature a kind of gift that touches the mind and heart.” Inspired by landscapes and flora, she captures the unique ways light affects them and hopes to convey her love of nature’s beauty to the viewer.

“Alternating between pastels and watercolors is a great discipline,” explains Eastman. “The two mediums are so different—pastel is applied directly from the chunk of color in your hand to paper. It’s dry, textural, and you work from dark to light. It’s direct and spontaneous. With watercolor, you have to plan ahead—considering the amount of water, brush, and technique—and you work from light to dark. It’s mostly unforgiving, yet beautifully fluid and unlike any other medium.”

Eastman hopes her nature paintings bring viewers as much joy as she feels while creating them. Additional pieces of her work can be found at Main Street Art Gallery in North Conway Village.

For more information about this exhibit, call (603) 812-1488 or email riverstonescustomframing@gmail.com.