WINSTED — Pain at the pump continues in Winsted and across the state with many gas stations charging $4.11 a gallon as of Monday, April 25.This marks an 84-cent rise from the beginning of the year, when a gallon of gas averaged $3.27.According to fuelgaugereport.aaa.com, a gas price tracking website operated by the Automobile Association of America (AAA), the average price of gas for the region one year ago was $2.98 a gallon.Jim MacPherson, spokesman for Connecticut AAA, said that the high gas prices are taking a toll on drivers nationwide.“There has been a decrease in domestic demand for fuel because people are starting to drive less,” MacPherson said. “We can’t blame domestic demand as part of the cost push. There are so many factors and so many culprits to this story that you can run out of space writing about it.”The unrest in the Middle East continues to be a major factor in the high prices, as well as the continuing decrease in value of the American dollar.“Crude oil prices are now at a point that we have not seen in a couple of years,” MacPherson said. “If you go back to the peak of the high gas prices in 2008, the highest crude oil was trading was from $145 to $148 a barrel. Right now [as of Monday, April 25] they are $113 to $114 a barrel. We are seeing very high prices for crude oil.”MacPherson added that since civil unrest started in Libya, crude oil production in that country has been stopped.“It’s interesting to note that officials from Saudi Arabia originally suggested that their country would make up the difference, but they have chosen not to,” MacPherson said. “Will it climb up to $5 a gallon? I cannot say. If there is a supply disruption, a hurricane in the Gulf or a complete and total unraveling of the situation in the Middle East, it will put tremendous pressure on the cost of the fuel supply that is available. It’s hard to predict. In the past, I have seen a number of unforeseeable ugly events that have caused problems with gas prices.”According to MacPherson, the all-time high for gasoline prices in Connecticut is $4.39 a gallon in May 2008.While the consumer may be losing money due to high gas prices, oil companies are not suffering the same kind of loss.Multiple news outlets have reported this week that many of the international oil companies that serve America, including Exxon-Mobil and Sunoco, are seeing record profits in the range of billions of dollars.On Sunday, on the CBS television program “Face The Nation,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal called for the Department of Justice to investigate whether illegal practices are driving up gas prices in the state and all over the country.In the meantime, AAA Southern New England has issued a warning to drivers not to run their vehicles on empty.According to AAA, running a vehicle to the bottom of the gas tank may cause sediment to clog the automobile’s fuel pump, fuel filter or fuel injectors. It can also cause the electric fuel pump inside certain automobiles to overheat. Replacing any one of the fuel-related components can cost more than $500 in parts and labor.Several websites track gas prices locally and nationally, including fuelgaugereport.aaa.com, gasbuddy.com and autos.msn.com.
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“I don’t really consider myself a traditional gallerist,” explained Terzian, a Southern California native who moved to Connecticut in 2008. “I see myself more as an artist advocate.”
Established in 2021 as a platform to promote the work of emerging and mid-career artists, Terzian’s gallery has grown into one of Litchfield County’s most compelling launching pads for contemporary art. Focusing on drawing, works on paper and paintings in ambitiously varied visual vocabularies, the gallery has built a reputation for its devotion to the artists’ methods, tools, materials and critical thinking. Terzian has also cultivated a niche rooted in an ethos that favors intense tactile engagement over sheer wall acreage.
“The gallery is really meant to create a very intimate relationship with the artist and the story behind their work,” said Terzian, who has spent two decades organizing exhibitions in galleries and museums and taught art history and museum studies at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington for six years. “It’s always very much about the process and I think the artists and the visitors to the gallery really recognize and appreciate that focus.”
That commitment to creative rigor is raising Terzian’s profile among art institutions. The gallery’s acceptance into the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) earlier this year marked a significant milestone, cementing its place within an international network of contemporary galleries and arts professionals dedicated to supporting vanguard talent.
“Her innate enthusiasm allows artists to test out new bodies of work on the walls in a supportive environment, creating space for both joy and growth,” explained Rebecca McNamara, chief curator at the Mattatuck Museum.
Jenny Kemp, whose solo exhibition “Reverbs” runs through Dec. 12, echoes that sentiment: “She encourages artists to lead in shaping their exhibitions and the installation, giving them the freedom to respond to the space and bring their own vision to it.”
While Litchfield County has long attracted creative minds, Terzian’s arrival in 2021 coincided with a period of cultural momentum, allowing her to tap into an expanding cadre of local talent. The gallery’s roster bridges mid-career artists such as Fritz Horstman, Kristin Lamb and Richard Pasquarelli, who have exhibited their work in museums, galleries and art fairs throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Yet her programming also crosses geographic boundaries seamlessly, bringing work by painters and paper-makers from Brooklyn, Providence, Berlin as well as artists working in established studios across Connecticut.
Jennifer Terzian’s gallery showcases emerging and mid-career artists, with a focus on drawing, works on paper and painting.Provided
Recent exhibitions highlight Terzian’s curatorial leanings toward precision and patience over hyper-commerciality. Jessica Smolinski’s mixed-media works probed memory and time through photography and textiles, while Aliza Morell employed holographic streamers against flat fields of color transferred to canvas via a layered material process. China-born artist Jenny Wu, who studied studio art at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and American University, poured and layered liquid paint until it took on dense, sculptural forms.
“The space feels like you are leaving the day’s responsibilities behind and entering a world of serenity,” said Wu, whose paintings explore composition, color and materiality. “Stand there, look at the works, feel them, and let them consume you for once.”
Terzian advocates for a more intimate scale to help amplify impact and says the diversity of aesthetics allows her to build a space tailored to creative rhythms of the artist. “It fosters a better dialogue between artist, curator and collector.”
The gallery’s momentum coincides with a broader revival across Litchfield. The recent arrival of three boutique hotels — The Abner, Belden House and Lost Fox Inn — has brought a steady influx of younger, design-conscious travelers to Connecticut’s northwest corner, energizing the town’s cultural landscape.
“I love for people who are new to Litchfield to walk down those stairs to my gallery and just come inside and just be educated about the artists and their work,” Terzian reflected. “Whether or not they walk away with purchasing something, I just think the experience of coming into a space and not feeling intimidated is valuable.”
For more information, visit jenniferterziangallery.com.
Troy McMullen is a former Wall Street Journal reporter in Berlin and New York and currently an executive editor at ABC News. His arts and culture reporting appears in several New England publications, including Litchfield Magazine, New England Home and Connecticut Magazine. He splits his time between Manhattan and a weekend home in Litchfield, adjacent to the Hauser Nature Preserve.
Cusack recently moved his painting practice from Torrington into the former church at 58 Main Street. The move came about somewhat unexpectedly, after a change in ownership made his previous studio untenable.
“At first I thought it was just gonna be too much,” Cusack said. When he first saw it, the building still looked unmistakably like a church, with its vaulted ceiling, stained glass and architectural details intact. It had served as a place of worship for generations before closing roughly 12 years ago.
But the space began to make sense.
“I’m very philosophical, very spiritual, very humanistic,” said Cusack. “And so for me to be in a church sort of fits.”
Cusack still lives in West Cornwall, where he has a garden he describes as mature and beautiful, along with a saltwater pool. The church is strictly a working studio, though he hopes to bring students in and occasionally invite other artists to exhibit alongside him.
“From Ground to Gravity,” 2026, Oil on Canvas, 77 x 65 inchesProvided
As with every studio, Cusack says, there is a particular direction and position that feels right for painting. In the church, he gravitated toward a spot where the geometry of the building creates a distinct rhythm, near where the pews once ended, before the altar.
“I can already see the arc of the dome involved in my work,” he said.
The first painting he made in the new space, “Prophets and Proverbs,” grew out of three forms he encountered during his morning meditation at home. After drawing and reflecting on them, he came to understand them as expressions of different aspects of maturity: “ego, strategy, agency.”
The exhibition’s title comes from “Nature Eternal,” a painting of a young nude figure in a pink field that evokes, for Cusack, the Garden of Eden and an idea of bliss and perfection. “The Narcissist,” by contrast, considers what happens after that innocence is lost: the arrival of consciousness, self-awareness and the search for identity.
Two paintings of swimmers explore another dimension of that relationship. In “I Will Love You Completely,” Cusack sees a figure reaching outward from the canvas almost like an angel. “It’s a message from the divine,” he said. In another painting, the swimmer appears to be held by the water, suggesting the possibility of being held by something larger than ourselves.
Having grown up in New York, Cusack says his relationship with the natural world has deepened since moving to northwest Connecticut. He thinks about the glacier that passed through this region, leaving stones behind that have remained through countless chapters of human history. In a painting of stones, Cusack considers the wisdom of the landscape and the extraordinary passage of time. “To me, that’s an eternal wisdom.”
Cusack regularly visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he sits in the sculpture galleries, contemplating and drawing the figures.
“Drawing is just a way of looking and continuing to look,” he said. “It just helps me ground myself and be very present.”
“Nature Eternal,” 2026, Oil on Canvas, 77 x 47 inches.Provided
That practice of extended observation can be seen in the paintings. At first glance, Cusack’s color palettes can appear remarkably simple, sometimes almost monochromatic. But the longer one spends with them, the more they open up. Subtle shifts in tone and color begin to emerge, deepening and expanding the visual experience. What initially seems restrained becomes increasingly expansive as the viewer gives the work time and attention.
Before turning fully to painting, Cusack spent 12 years as a commercial artist represented by Morgan Gaynin Inc., where his work became known for its emotive storytelling. His paintings have appeared in Architectural Digest, Veranda, New England Home and Litchfield Magazine, among other publications, and are held in the collections of the United States Air Force, the New York Transit Museum and the Society of Illustrators. His training included an MA at Syracuse University and a year of classical study in France’s Loire Valley with a master painter who was also a former Zen monk.
The church, meanwhile, has its own layers of history. During the many repairs required after Cusack moved in, a plumber mentioned that he had been married there. His wife had since died, and Cusack asked whether he was sure he wanted to return to the building. He was.
It is a small story, but one that seems to resonate with Cusack’s interest in the passage of time and the histories held by places and objects. Although he says he doesn’t feel a particular presence in the church, he is conscious of its history and of the community for whom it was once a gathering place.
For now, he is looking forward to welcoming people into his new studio and seeing how they respond to the paintings. “Interacting with the work” is important, he said. “It always feels good to have people in your studio space.”
“Eternal: New, Recent and Near Distant Paintings” will be on view Nov. 13–15, from 1 to 5 p.m., at 58 Main Street (the Stone Church) in North Canaan. An opening reception will take place Saturday, Nov. 14, from 4 to 7 p.m.
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