“ROCKY POINT ON THE SAND”: Seascape and still life oil paintings by Christine Lafuente are on view at Morpeth Contemporary in Hopewell through January 4. The exhibition celebrates the gallery’s 20-year working relationship with the artist.

Morpeth Contemporary in Hopewell presents “Looking Into Water,” a new body of seascape and still life oil paintings by Christine Lafuente, on view through January 4. The exhibition, which explores how painting seascapes has influenced her shimmering floral arrangements, celebrates the gallery’s 20-year working relationship with Lafuente.

In her paintings of harbors, rocky coasts, and the islands of Acadia, light plays through varying atmospheres of fogs, mists, and clear sunny days. “Looking into water changes how I see nature,” says Lafuente. “It becomes abstracted and mysterious, as in the way form falls apart and coalesces again in a reflection on the water. As I begin to express this transformation in paint, I also seek to recreate this visual experience in my still life compositions. Inside a glass water-filled vase is a microcosm of how the world reveals itself in paint.”

Lafuente’s painterly still life works give us fields of atmosphere punctuated by jewels of chromatic light. Flowers, bottles, teacups, and cherries all reflect in her tabletop, merging together a world of the known and the ephemeral in the sensuous medium of oil paint.

Lafuente grew up in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and was influenced by the Hudson River School of Painting at a young age. She holds an A.B. in English from Bryn Mawr College, a Certificate in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and an M.F.A. in Painting from Brooklyn College. An award-winning artist, Lafuente has received an Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, been included in the Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and most recently received a Medal for Achievement in Visual Arts from the Philadelphia Sketch Club. Her work is part of many public and private collections. She has exhibited in New York, London, and extensively along the East Coast. Lafuente lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Morpeth Contemporary is located at 43 West Broad Street in Hopewell. For more information, call (609) 333-9393 or visit www.morpethcontemporary.com.