Community Corner

Swampscott Artist's Dreamers At Auction For Hospice

Swampscott artist Mark Shasha is serving as the signature artist for the Hospice of the North Shore & Greater Boston's auction and regatta.

Swampscott artist Mark Shasha‘s painting The Dreamers reflects time and care.

When the oil painting is auctioned on June 17, the proceeds will fund the same.

The money will go to the Hospice of the North Shore & Greater Boston, a nonprofit that delivers care for patients when time is short.

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This is Shasha’s second time as signature artist for the regional hospice’s auction and regatta. 

For 2005’s event he painted a mother and daughter. They stood on rocks at the shore under summer hats and gazing at distant sailboats. 

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“I love painting the ocean,” Shasha said. “There is water in all my paintings.”

The Dreamers pictures a father and son at the shore. The boy holds a toy sailboat as they watch a  a large sailing vessel pass below, its light-filled sails angled toward them.

The season is high summer though the idea for the painting first surfaced last October.

That was a sketch in Shasha’s mind’s eye.

He figured out what he wanted to do on Jan. 1.

He then worked 10-12 hours a day for more than two months, finishing March 10.

“They chose me so it had to be a good one (and) rise to the occasion,” he said in his upstairs’ studio at home.

Diane Stringer, president of the North Shore & Greater Boston Hospice, said Shasha’s painting speaks to families, to fathers and sons.

“It’s a very apt image for hospice,” Stringer said.

Stringer’s hospice serves 86 communities, caring for individuals and families responding to life-threatening illnesses.

Shasha, who makes his living selling paintings, is glad to be contributing his art to the hospice.

He paints 25 to 40 paintings a year and sells them in a Martha’s Vineyard gallery and elsewhere.

Shasha doesn't know what the painting will bring at auction. If sold in a Provincetown gallery the painting would sell for an estimated $23,000 to $25,000, he said.

His 2005 painting for the auction and regatta raised $9,500, he said.

The Dreamers is on display at the Arnould Gallery in Marblehead.

The original painting will be auctioned on June 17 at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Marblehead, followed two days later by the regatta. 

Bid by proxy by contacting the hospice at 978-223-9787.

Signed limited edition prints and note cards are for sale, too.

Visit www.hns.org/regatta for more information.


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