For 11 years, showcasing local artists and locales

‘"Beach Path" by Marjorie Osborne Whorf of Hingham was used for the postcard invitations to this year's Sea & Sky Art Show.

Inspired by the beauty of the coastal environment and the wealth of regional talent, the annual Sea & Sky Art Show takes place this month at the Hull Lifesaving Museum.

The show, an opportunity "to showcase the local art community," according to museum director Victoria Stevens, includes 75 pieces by 48 artists, most of them from South Shore towns including Hull, Hingham, Cohasset, Marshfield, Scituate, Kingston, Duxbury, and Plymouth.

Now in its 11th year, the show developed from the work of a "plein air" group of painters who years ago casually got together on Friday mornings to paint along the Hull coast. They painted Hull Gut from Pemberton Point, the view from Nantasket Pier, and the Boston Harbor islands, said Hull painter Sally Chisholm, who pointed to the late Hingham artist Barbie Guild as the group's leader.

"Barbie Guild inspired us," Chisolm said. "She could pull anything out of anyone."

The plein air painters looked for a way to show the art they had produced and found a home in the Lifesaving Museum. The group then took the exhibition to another level, turning it into a juried show and attracting wide participation by regional artists.

Guild died last year, and the show took a year off. "She was the founder and the glue who kept us together," Chisolm said.

This year's show is "our comeback year," said Hingham painter Marjorie Osborne Whorf. One of its goals, Whorf said, is to attract visitors to the museum at Point Allerton near the tip of the Hull peninsula.

"Many people don't realize how pretty it is out there," Whorf said.

The art show spotlights the history of the US Lifesaving Station, and the programs the museum offers, such as the after school rowing program for teenagers.

The show's regional character enables viewers to recognize favorite local spots, "beautifully interpreted," Stevens said, "by some of the region's most gifted artists."

The juried show, which welcomes all artists, was judged this year by prize-winning watercolorist Andrew Kusmin, who also operates a gallery in Plymouth. Whorf said running a gallery gives him an eye for the full range of media represented in the show. A smaller show of about 15 pictures by some of the museum's 700 members is displayed at the same time.

Whorf is a highly respected painter herself. An en plein landscape oil painter, she studied with Henry Hensche in Provincetown, one of major influences in the American Impressionist school. Hensche was an exponent of color and luminosity, Whorf said, who also emphasized the importance of draftsmanship.

This year Whorf is showing a painting of Crow Point, a scenic bump on the Hingham shoreline overlooking Hingham Harbor, near World's End; and a summertime view of the veterans memorial in Cohasset, amid the flowers planted there by the town's garden club.

Chisholm said she is displaying both watercolors and pastels in the show, including a pastel titled "Sunrise on Nantasket Beach" and a view of Basset Island in Buzzards Bay titled "Lazy Days."

The show's prize winners, announced last week, are: best in show, "Abandoned" by Wes Carlson of Hull; best oil, awarded to both "House on the Hill" by Ros Farbush of Hull and "Drying the Jib" by Margaret McWethy of Hingham; best pastel, "Center Street Bog" by Joan Dromey of Kingston; and best photograph, "Black Sea I" by Darleen Bradlee of Scituate.

Robert Knox can be contacted at rc.knox@gamil.com.