The Tremaine Art Gallery at The Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn. is pleased to present Wish You Were Here, featuring works by Fern Apfel and Colleen McGuire, from November 4, 2025 through January 25, 2026, with an opening reception on Saturday, November 15 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Curated by Joan Baldwin, Wish You Were Here is a collaboration between Apfel and McGuire, each exploring a geography of place and worlds they care about. Their work greets us like letters, something to unfold, something intimate, and maybe something connecting us to larger themes around questions around home, place, light and loss. Apfel and McGuire join curator Joan Baldwin for an artists’ talk Thursday, November 13 at 7 pm in Tremaine Art Gallery.

If you ask Fern Apfel about her paintings, she will tell you she’s a still life artist. She will also remind you gently that she makes paintings, not collages. That is because Apfel’s paintings of paper, letters, diaries, journals and lists, are often so realistic that viewers believe they were glued onto the canvas. She writes, “Nudging the boundaries between language, painting and abstraction, my pictures present life not as then versus now, but as an inescapable circle of time and memory.” Apfel is a multi-year recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Grants, and a four-time recipient of the Mohawk Hudson Regional Purchase Award. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Hyde Collection, The Tang Teaching Museum, the Shaker Museum, the Albany Institute of History and Art, and SUNY Albany Museum as well as corporate and private collections.

Colleen McGuire paints the world around her home and studio. Writing about her work, she says “I see my paintings as a visual record of places I encounter throughout my day, with the intention of capturing sensations of light and space.” Working in oil on board, McGuire masters the art we experience daily, recording rain on her car windows, her fogged bathroom mirror or the fractured light on her front porch. McGuire is an adjunct professor of studio art and art history at Western Connecticut State University. A frequent regional exhibitor, her work has been seen at Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson, NY, Standard Space in Sharon, CT, and Hillstead Museum in Farmington.

The Tremaine Art Gallery is located at 11 Interlaken Road, Lakeville CT and is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. The Gallery is closed Mondays, and also over the School’s Thanksgiving and Winter breaks, November 22 through December 1, 2025 and December 16, 2025 through January 5, 2026.