Between Towns: Roads, Land, Community by Ingrid Van Slyke

Between Towns: Roads, Land, Community by Ingrid Van Slyke will be featured in View's Eco Gallery alongside our Tracks & Trails: Marks Left Behind Exhibition. This is a yearlong series of soft pastel paintings created through a New York State Rural and Traditional Arts Fellowship. The project explores several of the main roads that connect communities throughout the Adirondack Park, including Routes 30, 28, 86, 3, and 73. The paintings focus on places along these roads that I personally travel, exploring the relationship between the road, the surrounding landscape, and the communities it connects.

Living in Lake Placid, I travel these roads regularly as part of everyday life. They take me to work, medical appointments, food, education, cultural experiences, and to the communities that surround me. The paintings in this series come from places I have personally traveled between Lake Placid, Saranac Lake, Keene Valley, Wilmington, Tupper Lake, Long Lake, Blue Mountain Lake, Indian Lake, Old Forge, and North Creek.

These journeys often mean traveling long distances through changing weather, seasons, and terrain. Looking out the car window and through the windshield, I experience the landscape in motion and in continual change. Familiar roads are never quite the same. Light shifts, weather moves through, seasons transform the landscape, and each journey offers a different way of seeing a place I may have traveled many times before.

Working from direct observation, sketches, and personal photographs gathered while traveling these roads at different times of day and throughout the seasons, I use soft pastel to explore the changing light, color, atmosphere, and terrain of these familiar places. Through the lens of an artist looking out the car window, the landscape is continually re-seen. What may appear to be an ordinary stretch of road becomes an opportunity to notice the subtle changes that shape our experience of place.

The road is both a physical presence and a metaphor. It represents the enduring spirit of the people who live here, as well as home, exploration, perseverance, and the passage of time. More than scenic byways, these roads are lifelines that connect communities and shape daily life throughout the Adirondack Park.

For me, these roads hold a personal and shared sense of connection. They carry us through the landscape and bring us toward one another, linking the places we live, the people we know, and the experiences that make a place home.

Funding for this project is made possible with the support from the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Governor’s office and the New York State Legislature.

Artist Bio:

Ingrid earned her M.F.A. in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2023. Her work has been featured in national and international exhibitions and publications, including the Pastel Society of America’s Enduring Brilliance exhibitions at the National Arts Club and the Salmagundi Club in New York City. Her paintings are also held in the permanent collection of the Adirondack Experience Museum.

Based in Lake Placid, New York, Ingrid’s work is deeply rooted in the Adirondack landscape. Working primarily in soft pastel, she explores the shifting effects of light, color, atmosphere, and form through a loose, impressionistic approach. Her paintings are inspired by the quiet moments and constant changes found in nature, seeking to capture not only the appearance of a place, but the feeling of being within it.

An experienced educator, Ingrid teaches soft pastel painting to individuals and groups and regularly speaks and presents for museums and arts organizations. She is represented by Gallery 46 in Lake Placid.

Ingrid lives with her family in the Adirondacks, where the surrounding landscape continues to provide an endless source of inspiration and discovery for her work.