It’s always summer in Leah Giberson’s paintings.

The lawn is mowed, the skies are clear, and the days will never end. 

Optimistic Americans set out for adventure in Airstream campers—vintage now, but once futuristic looking—as if they could literally fly to the moon. In reality, the campers were hauled on highways and parked in crowded campgrounds.

“There’s a kind of heartbreak,” Giberson said. “Reality isn’t always what we expect at the onset.”

Giberson had to find this out for herself. She grew up deep in the cold New Hampshire woods, idealizing the colorful suburbs and summer vacations of commercials.

“These worlds were kind of like fairy tales to me,” she said. “As an adult, I realized things are much more complicated.”

Now, when Giberson paints, she revisits these worlds, basking in the California light, but cautious not to stay too long.

“We all kind of over-simplify other people’s experiences,” she said. “The paintings are obviously impossibly bright.”

July marks Giberson’s fourth solo show at Nahcotta in Portsmouth during the peak of summer. This month’s exhibit opens with a reception in conjunction with Art ’Round Town on Friday, July 6, from 5 to 8 p.m.

Nearly half of the new paintings have already sold.

With their mid-century modern designs, Giberson’s paintings not only appeal to the eye, but also to the nostalgic heart. But the thing about nostalgia is that the past was probably not as good as we remember or imagine, and either way, it’s gone now.

And so, while the images may appear postcard-perfect, they actually remind viewers that there is no such thing.

This notion could even extent to Giberson’s hyper-realism painting style. It looks impeccable from a distance, and she admits to being a perfectionist in her own way, but up close, her process becomes more apparent in the texture beneath the surface. This in no way detracts from the quality of the paintings, but at least makes their realization seem less impossible.

Giberson admits nothing else in her life is as organized as her paintings. She said she suspects that ideal appearances cover up deeper flaws.

She works from photographs, either her own or with permission to use ones with a similar style to hers. She enlarges them, prints them on heavy, archival paper, cuts them up and reassembles them on panels, then paints directly onto that surface.

While painting, she fills in information that wasn’t previously there and omits the noise she doesn’t want to appear. In this way, she said, she retells the story in her own words to make it more personally meaningful.

“By the time I’m done, they become my story,” she said.
Her work has gotten larger and more detailed over time. She has started to create reflections with remarkable believability, in the windows or on the shiny sides of the trailers, to further set the scene. 

In recent years, she has focused on vintage campers and lonely lawn chairs, but her earlier work often included boxy houses in the suburbs, squared off by lawns and tied down by power lines.

In almost all her paintings, the settings are devoid of people, but from the exterior we can often see signs of life. It looks quiet, but there’s a drama in that, too, she said. It builds anticipation to find out the secrets, and a lack of specifics leaves most to the imagination.

“It always surprises me how few people I see in suburban settings,” Giberson said. “Honestly, people don’t go outside as much as they should.”

The houses, trailers and chairs become the characters and, in that way, the paintings become portraits, personifying the objects.

For the most part, Giberson says she paints places and objects other people overlook.

“When I’m painting, I feel like I’m listening and paying attention,” she said.

She knows she’s done with a painting when it sings to her.

“I wish I could sing and I wish I could write, and I guess I do it through painting,” she said. “I feel like I get perfect pitch when I paint.”

Nahcotta is at 110 Congress St., Portsmouth, 603-433-1705.