Lost Town — Paintings by Trace Meek

I’m having an art show, and you’re invited. I’ll be showing my work the entire month of February, 2026, at the ECA Gallery in Easthampton, Massachusetts. The gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 12:00–2:00 p.m.

There will be a reception from 4–7 p.m. on Saturday, February 7th. I will be there, and I hope to see you!

Lost Town is a series of eleven paintings inspired by the true story of the four “lost towns” of the Swift River Valley — Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott, Massachusetts — all of which were sacrificed in the 1930s in the name of progress. The four towns were flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir, to supply drinking water to the then-growing population of the Greater Boston Area. 

At its core, this body of work is about loss. The people in these communities were forced to leave their homes and the land that they had grown to love. In a sense, they lost a part of their identity, in much the same way as indigenous peoples did when people from Europe moved in, generations prior. Buildings were torn down, and the whole place disappeared under water.

But this work is also about transcending loss by remembering. These paintings are sentimental portraits of real people and real places. But in the context of this show, they serve as “actors” portraying similar people and landscapes that could have existed in the vanished valley, and in the hearts and minds of the expatriates.

The works