A brush with Lydia Cassat

Celestial art may be the best way to describe Lydia Cassatt’s pastel dreamscapes, on display through June 18 at Elan Fine Arts on Elm Street in Rockland. Technically they fit into the landscape category, but with names such as “To Those That Magic Make,” “Morning Glow” and “Somewhere in the Silence,” the works hum in Elan’s airy upstairs gallery room. A zafu or sitting bench would not be out of place for an extended encounter with these prayerful pieces. Cassatt calls the works “meditations” for good reason. A devout plein-air artist, Cassatt packed up her traveling easel and pastel box last year and moved indoors to a studio on the second floor of her Brooksville home. There, with natural light streaming through windows, she took the ultimate aesthetic journey: inward. “I’m trying to go to a deeper place within myself. I’m working more from memory now,” said Cassatt last week, a few days before leaving for a monthlong pilgrimage to Tibet with her Buddhist teacher. She cites her Eastern spiritual leanings, as well as volunteer work as a hospice caregiver, as influences. The images, rich with pink, peach, turquoise and ember-orange tones, feel like hidden places, or at least secret moments, when the light in the sky hugs the horizon with a burst of color or a curtain of darkness. “I realize all this is connected,” said Cassatt, who lays down color then wipes and adds, wipes and adds. “It flows out of me. My practice of meditation has given me inner peace.” To that end, what might be called her “midnight works” – “Good Day Done” and “Reflections from the Moon” – blend deep purples and blues for a shadowy, serene mood. Others, such as “Glowing Light” and “To Soar Away,” suggest tiny reminiscent swatches of Maxfield Parrish-style illuminations. Cassatt, whose great-great-great-aunts are Mary and Lydia Cassatt (one the great Impressionist painter, the other her older sister and model), turns 50 at the end of this month. “It feels like a wonderful, momentous occasion,” said the artist of her half-century status. “I’ve gotten over the idea that I need to make a huge mark with my work. It’s about light and about beauty, and that’s just fine.” – Alicia Anstead