Scene Around: Fair Haven Artist Paints a ‘Meet Me at the Ferris Wheel’ Connection

Gallery October 12, 2026 Elaine Van Develde

“Meet me at the beer booth.” Seemingly since the dawn of Fair Haven time, it’s been the mantra for friends, new and old, connecting at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair.

Not these days — at least in the art world’s view. Fair Haven artist Kathleen Reilly Beausoleil has coined a modified, evocative fair meet-up phrase through her oil painting work that goes far beyond the canvas and Fair Haven to illuminate a universal soul reunion of home and heart. Meet Me at the Ferris Wheel is what her now-running art show at The Painting Center in New York City has been dubbed.

While Beausoleil’s exhibit title and paintings, to any Fair Havenite, are clearly very much about a Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair connection inspiration — fair scenes depicted full of that Fair Haven hometown feeling — they are also all about something much bigger in the connection sphere of all Earthly things in this Milky Way speck.

Yes, there are other fairs in her life’s work, as it’s a recurrent Beausoleil theme; but, she is a Fair Haven girl. Call her Fair Haven a mammoth microcosm. Many have even seen Beausoleil painting in her own quiet corner of the fair. What she was seeing, few may have realized, if they even noticed her in the crowd hubbub, was a lot louder — a cycle of leaving, riding away, reaching to come back to a familiar spot with familiar feelings. Imagine that: Each stroke of her brush screaming a soothing, blurred hush of home’s hearth. Heart. It’s easy to see it, even hear it beating with varying cadences of comfort inside each creation. A beat and soft plunge into a fair world from the tippy top of the ferris wheel.

“Kathleen’s work is luminous, active, detailed, painterly, and evocative of experiences each of us may hold uniquely in our own memory.,” Fair Havenite, friend to Beausoleil and fellow artist, Susan Culbert said. “What I love about her work is an indefinable distortion of space that has more to do with the sense of being inside the worlds she creates, and less about accurate representation. With intense color, dizzying perspectives, and at times, the ocular blur of the fairground’s intrinsic sensory overload, one can almost smell the popcorn and fried dough.”

Culbert and Rumson artist Judi Tavill were at the reception and caught the Beausoleil feelings up close. You can spy the local creatives in the below photos taken by Culbert. But you didn’t have to be there to catch those feelings. R-FH Retro wasn’t, but could easily catch the feeling. See for yourself. You’re likely to get a few goose bumps and maybe feel some tears roll down the cheeks. Take a look (at the gallery below … click on one photo to enlarge and scroll … and the gallery’s website and Beausoleil bio) to see Beausoliel’s evocation of “a different meaning of gathering,” as the gallery’s website tells her art story.

Beausoleil’s Meet Me at the Ferris Wheel, which opened on Sept. 29, had its reception last Thursday, Oct 8. It runs through Oct. 24.
R-FH Retro will be sitting down with Beausoleil for a full interview and feature in the near future. Stay tuned. In the meantime, take it all in, for art’s sake …