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Those who go to see Beth Basista's paintings at Fellows Riverside Gardens' Weller Gallery will be able to walk outside and see the inspiration for many of the works on the walls.
More than half of the work featured in "Painted Memories" was inspired by the Boardman artist's visit to Mill Creek MetroParks.
"This is a dream come true," Basista said. "All my life I've loved the park. My parents took us there frequently, so I developed a knowledge of the park and navigating the trails and so forth. And then I continued to do that. I bought a house close by, so I rode my bike from my house to the old mill and back for years."
Having her own advertising business prevented her from picking up her paintbrushes very often, but in the last decade it's become more of a passion.
"I switch between different mediums," she said. "I go from oil to acrylics to watercolors, and I've just enjoyed it ever since. I'm pretty much a full-time artist."
Basista enjoys plein air painting -- painting in nature -- and Mill Creek provides a bounty of options.
"There's so many scenes I still have tucked in the back of my mind I want to paint," Basista said. "You can go back to the scene and just turn and paint that scene again from a different view."
Lanterman's Mill has been a frequent backdrop for many of Basista's paintings, whether it's capturing the structure during different seasons or from different angles. In some cases, Basista's work captures scenes that no longer exist. Florida is another destination that she puts on canvas, in some cases capturing sights that no longer exist because of such natural disasters as hurricanes.
"You can preserve a memory and capture a scene that maybe means a lot to somebody else as well, and it brings joy and kind of like tranquility to it, you know, where you can step into the scene and be there," she said.
Basista is a member of the Mahoning Valley Watercolor Society, and her work has been included in the Butler