POUGHKEEPSIE, NY.- The rural beauty of his native Scotland and adopted Hudson Valley in New York inspires the atmospheric paintings of Vincent Connelly. “Sometimes I wonder if I am painting nature or not," Connelly said. "Sitting in a field, or on a roadside, I see my work as a vehicle to go from one place to another. Whether it be a large field or barn, they are both the same."

A retrospective of forty-one Connelly oil and pastel works, Landscapes in the Mist, will be shown November 27 - December 20, 2006 in the James W. Palmer Gallery of the College Center. The gallery will also host a reception for the artist on Friday, December 8, from 5:00-8:00 p.m.

Connelly counts the landscape painters J.M.W. Turner and Wolf Kahn as main influences, along with his great admiration for Paul Cezanne. Connelly's creative approach, as he explained to the weekly arts publication Alm@nac, >is to, "'push and paint', letting his ideas, via distinct memories of places, direct his actions."

The scenery at upstate New York's Mohonk Mountain, where Connelly has maintained a studio for more than 15 years, is a key subject of his work. Both his oil and and pastel paintings are highly regarded, and since 1984 he has widely exhibited in each media. His works have been in solo and group shows throughout the Hudson Valley, in Connecticut, and in Glasgow, Scotland.

Connelly yearned to paint from a young age. “While the other kids in the projects were playing cowboys and Indians, I was trying to figure out how to get to the museums in Glasgow to see Rembrandts and Dalis,” he recalled in the Alm@nac interview.

But only after moving to the U.S., completing college, and starting a family did Connelly begin regularly producing canvases. Encountering a Cezanne work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was a turning point in his painting life, Connelly told Alm@nac. "I was electrified. I knew when I saw that Cezanne I had to be a painter. I couldn’t fool around any more.”