For Colin Ruel and Nettie Kent, an upcoming portrait exhibition at their Menemsha gallery is a deeply personal one. The show will feature 16 portraits of Islanders significant to the couple’s life. 

“Every year I do two or three portraits and then I set them to the side...but then I had the idea of doing a portrait show eventually when I had enough, and I realized I did this year, so I’m excited to finally show them,” Mr. Ruel said.

The gallery will host an opening reception on Thursday, August 14 from 5 to 7 p.m.

Nettie Kent shows displays some of the portraits.

Jeanna Shepard

Nettie Kent shows displays some of the portraits.

Jeanna Shepard

Mr. Ruel said the artistic process was an emotional one.

“A portrait sometimes feels kind of dead, and then all of a sudden you’ll do one little thing and it almost echoes a memory of an expression or something that they did, and it suddenly jumps from dead to a little bit of life,” Mr. Ruel said.

The small building that sits next door to what was once The Bite and now hosts an outpost of Iggy’s Bread, has been in the Ruel family since the early 1900s, when it was Colin’s great-grandfather’s garage.

“My grandmother then took it over in the 1960s and started a shop here, the Harbor Craft Shop, with my grandfather, but she would work in here all the time and sell things she made, and a lot of my grandfather’s carvings and weather vanes and drawings,” Mr. Ruel said.

In 2020, Colin and Nettie created the Ruel Gallery in that same space.

“We show Nettie’s jewelry, I make a lot of knives, orc knives and chef’s knives, and then scenes from Martha’s Vineyard, but very personal scenes that I know very well and mean a lot to me,” Mr. Ruel said.

The show will feature a variety of Islanders, including close friends and family.

“One of the first real portraits I did was of my grandfather, which I gave to my grandmother after he died some years back and so I’m going to show that and a few portraits of Nettie and my son Razmus when he was little, and Nettie’s dad [artist Doug Kent], so family people, and then also others like old people who have passed and younger people,” he said.

Mr. Ruel said he is looking forward to welcoming the Vineyard community to the show.

“I want the people who are in the year-round community or those who know these people to feel happy seeing these people....and laugh at some of the funnier portraits, and I want the summer folks and people who don’t know this community as well to wonder, oh, who’s that,” he said.

“I want to show that these people are what makes the community, it’s the real personal connections,” he added.

The show will be on display for a week. On Saturday, August 16 the gallery will host a portrait party from 4 to 7 p.m., bringing in several photographers to shoot portraits next to the art portraits.