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Common Waters: Once Removed, Always Returning
Susan Darwin & Lou Schellenberg

Show Dates: March 21 - April 17, 2026
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 21, 3:00-5:00pm
FREE and Open to the Public

The Marion Art Center is pleased to present its newest exhibition, Common Waters: Once Removed, Always Returning. The show features the art of Lou Schellenberg & Susan Darwin. Each artist will command a floor at the MAC for this exhibition. Both artists work from observation, reference, and memory, creating colorful paintings filled with experiences of places they know and travel to. In addition to having successful lifelong careers in art, Susan and Lou are cousins who share a love of Buzzards Bay, where they have common roots.

Susan Darwin is in the midst of her 10-Year Location Series which increasingly brings her to remote locations. Susan began her 10-year Location Series in 2020, turning her attention to a different location each year and creating 20 paintings annually that serve as a visual essay of what that location inspires and what it means to her. In a hurried world, where we are all caught up in our own stories, this series examines how a location can have the power not only to define us, but to awaken us and hopefully teach us to be here at any given moment.

Starting at a grand property on the banks of the Hudson River, she painted natural objects and tranquil scenes at the Locust Grove Estate in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 2020; produced a variety of paintings having to do with New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 2021; made works pertaining to life and land in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 2022; captured the diversity of the towns, flora, and fauna of New Jersey in 2023; and then traveled the East Coast in 2024, painting a 6.5-pound lobster and other sea creatures as well as vistas from Newfoundland to Florida. In the sixth year of the series, 2025, she traveled Cross Country looking for inspiration. Darwin says:

This past year took me to California and up the West Coast to Oregon. I was also able to paint in Detroit and Las Vegas. One year is not nearly enough time to cover the ground I had intended with “Cross Country,” but the assignment nevertheless gave me an abundance of options to explore. The Location Series is meant to highlight all there is that is explorable, near and far. I’m interested in going to places and looking for paintings.

Lou Schellenberg shares paintings that are inspired by decades spent along the North East coast from Massachusetts and Maine to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. She is a visual artist who divides her year painting in Pennsylvania, and Nova Scotia, Canada. Lou was raised in NY and New England and has a deep connection to the northeast coast. Living both rural and city experiences has influenced her life and work. For over thirty years Schellenberg’s landscape paintings have combined observation and invention, creating paired down compositions of dwellings and structures in the landscape and her surroundings. After receiving an MFA (SUNY Albany), she moved to Pennsylvania and taught as an Associate Prof of Art for 20 years.

Schellenberg has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in the US and Canada. Her paintings and public commissions are in many collections including Penn Medicine, The Milton S Hershey Medical Center and LL Bean, Maine. Her artwork is currently represented by The Willard Gallery in Maine, Blue Print Gallery in Dallas Texas, Warm Springs Gallery in Virginia and Keisendahl and Calhoun, PA.