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Loriann Signori said she has never thought of herself as an environmentalist or activist, only as an artist who loves the outdoors.

That all changed one day last year when the Kensington resident saw bulldozers and other large construction vehicles arrive in one of the Derwood fields she loves to visit to paint and draw.

"I'd been going to these fields and Lake Needwood and Lake Frank and all these different places all the time and then all of a sudden I was in one of my fields and, you know, the ICC construction was starting," she said, referring to the Intercounty Connector being built from Gaithersburg to Laurel. "It just came sort of quickly, I felt. There wasn't any construction, and then there was."

After learning that field and many others like it would be lost to the 18-mile cross-county toll road, Signori vowed she would do all she could to capture and preserve their beauty in pastel and paint.

"I was saddened by it so much that I decided that what I was going to do for me was mark these beautiful places before they were gone," she said. "It was really hard to watch them be torn down; I mean, these huge mature trees — some of them 100 years old — being wrenched out of the ground. It was really sad and it still is. So many of the fields are gone now."

Signori, a full-time artist who declined to give her age, began the project in August and within three months had amassed a collection of drawings and sketches that she transformed into large pastel and oil-paint works of art.

The pieces were first shown in the Dumbarton Concert Gallery in Washington, D.C., in November under the title, "Man vs. Nature, A Portrayal of the Sublime: The Farms and Fields Lost to the ICC."

"As someone who paints things because they make me feel, it really resonated inside me," Signori said of the project. "It's like it wasn't a choice [for me] to be able to honor these fields."

One picture titled "With Grace" shows rolling hills in shades of green blended with blue under a gray-hued sky. Tiny yellow and orange flowers dot the vista, which Signori said is located off Muncaster Mill Road near Col. Zadok Magruder High School.

Connie McKenna, a Derwood resident and longtime ICC opponent, said she is glad Signori is working to preserve the beauty of the open spaces that will be lost under to the highway.

She said that sound walls recently erected alongside her neighborhood, which sits west of Shady Grove Road along Briardale Road, will permanently cut off her family from a path they used to take to a meadow.

"The thought that someone is permanently capturing those fields and meadows is very consoling to me because we know they're lost forever," McKenna said.

Signori said she also visited fields tucked behind homes, including a cluster of houses located off of or near Emory Lane, in order to capture the area's beauty.

"The homeowners were always so kind to let me on their land and they told me all these sad stories about trees being pulled out of the ground," she said.

Some told her their grown children also were upset that the land around their childhood homes was being altered.

"I remember one [story]," Signori said. "This man broke down and cried as he watched his tree that he had a tree house in when he was 6 — he already was 36-years-old or something — get wrenched out of the ground. He was there with his mom and watched it happen."

Signori said she can relate to how those families are feeling because her paintings are predominantly landscapes — stemming from her love of nature as a child.

"The fields themselves are attractive to me because the house I grew up in Connecticut was in the middle of all woods," Signori said. "So as a child, I just went out by myself and would spend time in there. My draw to the land is very strong; I'd much rather just be outside in the fields and the woods rather than anywhere else."

Signori said she will continue to paint and draw her beloved fields in the midst of the continuing construction. She plans to show more of her pieces May 11 to June 5 at the Waverly Street Gallery in Bethesda.

"I'll keep going out there as long as there are still places to paint," Signori said. "How long? I don't know, but when you have a big road like that coming through, things change so fast."

To learn more

For more information about Loriann Signori and her art, visit

www.loriannsignori.com.