WOODSTOCK — One particular phrase was often invoked by friends to describe artist Peggy Kannenstine.
“She was a force to be reckoned with,” said Kannenstine’s longtime friend Linda Smiddy, explaining the phrase was not to be understood in a coercive sense but instead to evoke “the extraordinary strength, stamina, energy and effort Peggy marshaled on behalf of others. Peggy thrived on challenges.”
Kannenstine, a Woodstock artist whose eye for juxtaposing colors set ablaze her acrylic paintings and paper collages of landscapes and flowers with luminous shades that fill the senses, died Nov. 20, 2023, at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. She was 85.
Not solely a fine arts painter, Kannenstine was a fierce advocate for the arts throughout Vermont, volunteering untold hours of her time in leadership roles to a palette board of organizations, including the Vermont Arts Council, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt., and the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction.
When Smiddy, a Vermont Law School professor, once asked Kannenstine “what kept her going,” Kannenstine promptly answered: ” ‘to be told that it is impossible to do something beneficial that needs to be done,’ ” Smiddy recounted before pews crowded with friends who had come to pay tribute to Kannenstine’s life at North Universalist Chapel in Woodstock earlier this month.
Alex Aldrich, former director of the Vermont Arts Council, remembered how grateful he had been in being able to prevail upon Kannenstine to accept a second term as chair of Council.
It was during Kannenstine’s second term that her work advocating for the arts “at the regional and national level on issues of equity, access, education and creative aging” garnered her the National Assembly of State Agencies’ Distinguished Service Award in 2008.
“She was always ready to provide guidance and connections to people whose intentions were to suffuse their community with art and culture of all types,” Aldrich said.
Appropriate in celebrating an artist’s life, the chapel’s sanctuary was graced with legacies of Kannenstine’s art.
Behind a glass frame on the alter was enshrined Kannenstine’s paint-splattered artist’s smock. Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley, the chapel’s pastor, donned a stole over his robe that Kannenstine had helped to decorate. The back of the service’s program was printed with images of Kannenstine’s flower paintings, which her sister, Beth Lampe, asked everyone to raise so that she could snap a picture.
Kannenstine’s affinity for the natural world around her — the subject of many of her paintings and collages — was evident early.
She was a precocious child, who grew up in the Midwest as the eldest of five siblings. The family doctor, to check little Peggy’s hearing, once whistled in her ear, Beth Lampe, Kannenstine’s younger sister, shared at the service.
“Is that an Indigo Bunting?” 3-year-old Peggy responded.
“True story,” Lampe assured.
Graduating early and second in her high school class, Kannenstine went on to study fine arts at Washington University in St. Louis, considered then and now to have one of the best undergraduate and graduate studio arts programs in the country. At WashU, she met and fell in love with Lou Kannenstine, to whom she was married for 55 years before Louis died in 2014.
The couple, arts and literature oriented, initially gravitated to New York City, where Lou earned a doctorate at NYU while Peggy enrolled in a graduate studies at the Art Students’ League, the renowned training ground for studio painters. It was in New York where their son, David, and daughter, Emily were born. (David died from pancreatic cancer at age 47 in 2009.)
During the 1970s, while her husband embarked on a career in academia, Kannenstine exhibited her artwork at numerous one-woman, juried and group shows, mostly around New England.
But after Peggy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and the market for budding academics dried up, the Kannenstines, who had a summer home in East Barnard, decided a healthier life and better choices awaited them in rural Vermont, so they moved north.
They purchased a property on Old River Road in Woodstock, made into an equestrian center named Rivendell Stables and settled there for the next 30 years. Lou joined Countryman Press where he eventually became a partner and had his own publishing imprint.
Bente Torjusen, who retired in 2016 after 30 years as executive director of AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, recalled that Kannenstine drove over to introduce herself on Torjusen’s first day on the job in 1986.
Already in the Upper Valley for the better part of a decade, Kannenstine talked about the importance of AVA’s purpose to create opportunities for local and regional artists and to encourage them in their work.
To Torjusen’s surprise, however, Kannenstine also confided about her disease and single-minded purpose to prevail over it — because that was how important and vital art was in Kannenstine’s life, to the act of living.
“She made it clear to me that she was not going to let her MS be an obstacle that would prevent her from following her own important, creative pursuits,” Torjusen said.
Then, “deep in our conversation,” Torjusen remembers Kannenstine suddenly realized that she had to leave for her Jazzercise class.
“Here she was suffering from MS but embracing life in the most upbeat and energetic way,” Torjusen marveled. “And off she went.”
Torjusen said she witnessed how Kannenstine would — unbidden — tap into her extensive network of friends in the New England art world, never passing up a chance at raising exposure for artists and their work.
At AVA’s 25th anniversary in 1998, during which Kannenstine was one of the featured artists whose art was on display, Torjusen said Kannenstine “rallied her numerous contacts” from the Vermont Arts Council and Vermont Studio Center to come to Lebanon, N.H.
“For Peggy, it was important that they not only see her own work but equally important that they come to see and learn what AVA was all about,” admired Torjusen, calling the move “classic Peggy. She always knew how to seize the opportunity to further the arts in general.”
Kannenstine at times channeled her own pain — whether from the debilitating effects of MS or the personal grief she suffered at the premature death of her son — as a source of creative power and vision.
Following David’s death, Kannenstine painted a series of impressionistic landscapes under the title “From Luminous Shade,” which were paired with poems written by the Italian poet Guiseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970) and translated by late poet Ann McGarrell.
All three artists had had sons who died before them and knew the pain of loss intimately.
“Luminous Shade,” which was also published in a book form, is a “journey (with the three artists) from their numbing plunge into despair, through the dark months, and finally into sunlight,” the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center wrote when the series opened in 2016. “Kannenstine’s dramatic landscapes, reflecting a year’s seasonal change, are coupled with Ungaretti’s poems in McGarrell’s translated interpretation, delicately exploring the depths” of love and loss.
“Her drive to create beauty, even in her darkest moments, rescued her during an especially brutal attack of MS,” said Smiddy. “At that time when she couldn’t use her arms and hands, she taught herself to paint by holding the paintbrush between her toes.”
The last word at Kannenstine’s service was reserved for her daughter, Emily, who shared the memory of the “tremendous fear” she felt at 9 years old when she learned her mother had become very ill with MS.
“I grew up with a tremendous fear of her dying,” Emily said, lightheartedly noting “how unfortunate for us she lived until 85.”
“My mother lived her life in grace,” Kannenstine’s daughter said. “She had so many strikes against her yet she always pushed through, pushed ahead, hardly ever uttering a word of complaint. She was an example to me and a hope to others of what true strength and kindness really are.”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
