Pat Barkman’s Lakeside Gallery Will Opens Its Doors Again Next Weekend

By Shannon Hicks

It’s crunch time for Pat Barkman.

The Newtown artist has just over a week before her annual art exhibition, which is presented at the gallery at her home on Taunton Lake. Mrs Barkman annually presents watercolors in different genres, and each year offers new works alongside some of her favorites. This year’s collection features new paintings from her “Newtown Trailway: A Trail of Paintings” collection. The works depict scenes along Al’s Trail in Newtown.

Mrs Barkman is the vice president of Newtown’s Open Space Task Force and the leader of the Newtown Trails Committee, which has led the efforts to plan, blaze, and maintain Al’s Trail.

The trail was named to honor the late Al Goodrich, a longtime resident, mapmaker, and trailblazer who died in January 2004.

This past week, Mrs Barkman was receiving deliveries of frames for her new paintings, placing works in the gallery that is just outside the house she and husband Leon live in, and even putting final touches on some of the new “Trail of Paintings” pieces.

“This is when things get most crazy for me,” admitted Mrs Barkman.

The annual show and sale of her work will be Saturday and Sunday, June 11-12. Lakeside Gallery, at 49 Taunton Lake Road, will be open each day from 2 to 4 pm.

For years Mrs Barkman’s gallery has featured the paintings of the Newtown resident, who lives in a home that is loaded with and surrounded by inspiration, situated as it is on the banks of Taunton Lake. Birds and other animals are heard at all hours of the day, and their tracks are left behind for Pat and her husband, Leon. The gentle rippling of water is a constant, as is the beauty of the plants that surround the Barkman home.

Mrs Barkman has for years taken in the beauty that surrounds her and turns that into watercolor florals and landscapes that have been enjoyed by artists and art lovers alike for decades. These are the works that have been traditionally featured in the two-day event at Mrs Barkman’s art gallery (in addition to being presented in area group and solo exhibitions during the rest of the year).

The former college educator in technical communications became a full-time artist about 15 years ago and has not looked back since. She has taken only a handful of workshops, preferring to find her own style rather than emulate the works of others. She has a studio in her home that she can be found in at all hours of the day.

She has become an award-winning artist, and shows regularly around the area.

The Trail As Inspiration

In 1988, Mr Goodrich was the director of Newtown Forest Association. That was when he began walking the 23 open space properties that the association possessed at the time.

“I thought that I needed to get to know the properties in Newtown. After I saw every one of them, I wanted to show them to other people,” he said.

Mr Goodrich also served on the town’s first greenway committee alongside chairman Judy Holmes, when the two of them began brainstorming a continuous trail through town. The route they conceived was very similar to what is being blazed today.

While Al’s Trail has been in the works for nearly 15 years, the program kicked into high gear last year. A majority of the physical work for the trail was completed by dedicated volunteers during 2004, when, in all kinds of weather, residents of all ages with an interest in hiking spent hundreds of hours on blazing and improving the town’s longest continuous hiking trail.

Al’s Trail runs from Pond Brook in the Paugussett State Forest to McLaughlin Vineyard, through public utility and Nature Conservancy lands to Rocky Glen State Park, along Deep Brook in Fairfield Hills, and finally into the last portion known as the Sherman Mile, which brings the trail to its southern terminus behind Reed Intermediate School.

After measurement with a surveyor’s wheel, the length of Al’s Trail is estimated at ten miles — longer than the trail’s original planned length by three miles.

It was Mrs Barkman, who has long been devoted to environmentalism and involved in the Al’s Trail project, who decided to name the proposed greenway in honor of Mr Goodrich, even before his passing early last year.

In December 2003 Mrs Barkman told The Bee, “It was too lengthy to say ‘Greenway From Reed School To The Upper Paugussett,’ so I started calling it Al’s Trail. After all, he has worked so long on mapping trails in Newtown –– at least 12 years, I think.”

In the same story that introduced the trail’s name, Rob Sibley, then chairman of the Ad Hoc Open Space Committee, agreed that the trail should be named after Mr Goodrich, dubbing him the “elder statesman” of Newtown trails.

An engineer who first moved to Newtown in the early 1960s, Mr Goodrich retired in 1983 and proceeded to spend the next 20 years exploring trails throughout northwest Connecticut. He walked through Newtown’s forests, followed streams, mapped trails, blazed new trails, and rediscovered and mapped the network of abandoned railroad trails that crisscrosses the town.

In 1991, Mr Goodrich and Mary Mitchell wrote the first edition of the Newtown Trails Book, published by the Friends of the Booth Library. That edition was followed by updated versions as new trails were added. In 1997, a Rail Trails section was included.

Mr Goodrich was a dear friend of Mrs Barkman’s. A framed photo of Mr Goodrich is among the treasures found in her studio.

“We’ve worked so hard on this trail, and I find inspiration all around me,” Mrs Barkman said this week. “It just seemed natural for me to create this series.”

Lakeside Gallery is also open year-round by appointment. Call 426-8949 for details.