Jane Eccles

Greta Waldas, award-winning painter. Portrait commissions include Prime Minister Golda Meir, actress Lily Tomlin, and Broadway composer Jerry Herman. Her paintings are in hundreds of collections in the U.S., Mexico, Switzerland, England, and Canada. Collectors range from local Boston TV announcer Jack Hines to Vicente Fox, president of Mexico.

Greta studied at the Art Students League of New York for three years and with various private instructors, including Henry Hensche and Seong Moy. She has a Masters of Arts from N. Y. U.; post graduate work included courses at NYU and Columbia University. A lifetime devoted to painting has developed her color, design, and interpretive strengths.

Greta taught art in the NYC High School system from 1955 to 1965. She exhibited in NYC during that period. In 1968 she bought a house and barn in Wellfleet, and since the property was on a cove, she named the gallery accordingly. It became the now famous Cove Gallery. She exhibited and ran the Cove Gallery for 22 years, until selling it in 1989. During this period she also bought a home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, still goes there every winter, and exhibits there at the prestigious Atenea Gallery.

Artist's Statement: I grew up on a farm, felt part of the land, and still derive my inspiration from nature. After about 10 minutes of concentrating on a portrait, landscape or shorescape, something amazing happens. I see the rhythmic patterns more clearly, I feel how light creates form and harmonizes all the colors, I see how sky, land and water play against each other, how wind changes colors and adds movement. Soon I am one with it all. There is no time, no thought, no separation between me, the scene, and the work. Often passers by say to me that painting must be relaxing. It is anything but relaxing! It is inspirational, alive, beautiful, and complete! My aim is to convey this to the viewer.