Gerard Drive Paintings on View in Manhattan

Among the art at the Contemporary Art Fair NYC at the Javits Center this weekend are a series of paintings of the area around Gerard Drive in Springs.

Tina Duryea, of Darien, CT, said she was looking for new inspiration when she came across the area during visits with friends Laurie and Lexi Densen, whose family has long had a home in the area. She's painted a number of large abstract landscapes since, 10 of which will be shown at the fair.

A juried show, it opens Friday and exhibits the work of over 100 established and emerging painters, photographers, sculptors and artists working in mixed media.

Duryea, who considers herself a contemporary realist artist, said she was looking for a new direction after painting mainly portraits of children, pets and horses for commission. It was a "happy accident" she said. "It’s very easy to fall in love with that part of Long Island I think."

She said she was in awe of the beauty she spent the past year capturing in East Hampton — "the mix of the marshes and the water and the sky and the bay and the special light that there is out here, they all kind of came together to inspire me in a new direction with my work."

"There’s something that catches you," she said, whether it's the clammers or the crooked telephone poles. "A lot of my landscapes, they’re sort of a little bit of abstract, very loose brush work, having the man-made object in the greater sense of the landscape, anchors it."

"I could probably paint here for the next 10 years and be very happy," she said.

The show is open Friday from 2 to 7 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

For more on Duryea and her paintings, click here.