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Gloucester artist Reggie Rossignol is the creative talent behind Love & Light Affects.
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Inspired by nature and her strong faith, Rossignol’s artwork taps into the love and light that lives within all of us.
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Archival prints of original artwork, distinctive cards and card sets are available for purchase.
A Good Vibes story.
It was the French painter Henri Matisse who observed, “Creativity takes courage.”
For Gloucester artist Reggie Rossignol, who took up a paintbrush for the first time in 2017, creativity was born from the courage to face having hit rock bottom. A struggling 16-year marriage and, although she didn’t act on it, an unintentional attraction to a friend led to an overwhelming sense of shame at her failure as a wife.
To deal with her feelings, Rossignol did what she’d done all through high school and her early 20s: she sat down and wrote a poem. Drawing from the recent separation from her husband, the poem was about an oyster and a pearl and how we’re each made a certain way, allowing outside influences—like the grain of sand that irritates an oyster to form a pearl—to come in and affect us. It was the first time Rossignol had written in 12 years.
The difference was that once she finished the poem, she had a need to paint a picture of an oyster. It was easy enough to research oysters online as a starting point, but because Rossignol had never painted before, she lacked art supplies. Using her son’s pre-school paint set, she surprised herself at her ability to depict an oyster. Motivated by her success, she went on to try her hand at painting other objects as well. “They looked like what I was trying to paint,” she says. “That success really carried me through the divorce and having to create a new life.”
A mother of three and a full-time employee at Chesapeake Bank, Rossignol showed her paintings to those close to her. Her father was so impressed with her talent that he began sending art supplies to encourage her. Despite not having studied art or art history, she quickly found her favorite mediums,
watercolors and water-soluble wax pastels. “Someone asked me about abstract painting, and I didn’t even know what that was,” she admits with a laugh. “I want to eventually learn art history and technique, but for now I’m following my feeling on an intuitive level.”
Looking at her website, a visitor is struck by the simple beauty of her paintings. Colorful flowers, trees and landscapes mix with more abstract pieces depicting light, water and emotions. “Starting to write poetry again and starting to paint both happened because I had to let it out,” she says. “They were very cathartic and became spiritual practices for me.” Feeling like parts of herself had been put on hold for a very long time, Rossignol now feels as if the gates are open to all possibilities. “Everything wants to come out and I want to make thousands of things, learn so many things, and do so many things,” she explains. “There’s not enough time to do everything I want to do.”
After participating in an event at the Bay School Community Arts Center in 2018, her plans for the Gloucester Daffodil Festival and local farmers markets fizzled when pandemic restrictions changed everything.
A Zoll Vineyards event was it for 2020, so she’s had time to focus on online sales, developing a business plan and designing her website. Because of working from home with children all but two days a week, she’s been unable to paint as much as she’d like.
One thing that Rossignol is convinced about is that creativity is the answer to many of life’s dissatisfactions, including loneliness. “Creating something, even if it doesn’t look like much, that’s the cure for loneliness, at least it is for me,” she says. “If I can get in a real intuitive zone and just let it come out rather than forcing a painting, I find I am just being. I’m letting it flow and that’s the goal.”
Rossignol refers to the changes that caused her to take up painting as an eruption, adding to her other artistic pursuits such as guitar playing, stained glass and sewing. “I think a lot of women say they have no talent, but they never actually explore anything to find out,” she says. “They wait for the urge.” Because she had no desire to be a painter or to take art classes, she wonders if perhaps she was simply detached from those talents and not looking to find them.
“I’m the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been,” Rossignol says. “For as long as I can remember, I told myself who I had to be, but never knew who I was.” Her paintings now say otherwise.