The Marion Art Center will hold an opening reception with the artists of its next art exhibit on Friday, April 20, from 6-8 p.m.

The show, which will run through Saturday, June 2, features oil and watercolor paintings from Barbara Edlund Healy and Sharlie Sudduth, both of whom are known for their landscape, seascape and garden scenes.

A Connecticut native, Healy came to the south coast of Massachusetts as a college student studying textile design at UMass Dartmouth. She fell in love with the area and decided to stay – ultimately opening her studio in Dartmouth. She often paints plein-air to learn from nature, and enjoys exemplifying in her work the quiet beauty of the New England coast.

Sudduth, who grew up in Cambridge, attended Smith College, married, and raised four children. After that, she followed a winding path that included volunteering, owning a yarn shop, securing a master’s degree in counseling/psychology. Sudduth enjoys the process of drawing and “settling in” with a painting, and often loses sense of time and herself in her work.

“These paintings are what you think of when you reminisce about sailing on Buzzards Bay in the summer or traveling on the back roads of Maine in the winter,” said Shelly Richins, Marion Art Center’s President of the Board. She added, “We’ve been looking forward to this exhibit for a while and can’t wait to hear what visitors to the show have to say.”

The Marion Art Center, a 501(c)(3) designated non-profit organization which started in 1957, is located at 80 Pleasant St. in Marion.

The galleries are free and open to the public Tuesday through Friday, 1-5 p.m., and on Saturday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.