Next weekend at the Peterborough Historical Society will be the Winterlude Holiday Exhibit and Sale by the Monadnock Artists’ Guild, a group of artists that traces its own history to the region.

“I love the Monadnock region because it’s not a city,” says Mary Iselin, one of the Monadnock Artists’ Guild’s founding members. “It’s very supportive of the arts. You feel as if you’re a part of an ongoing group.”

This year’s Winterlude will feature five local artists, including Iselin. The exhibition and sale will be at the Historical Society on Dec. 4 from 3 to 9 p.m. and on Dec. 5 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

This is the ninth annual Winterlude. Admission is free and refreshments are provided. Harvey Tolman, member Frankie Brackley Tolman’s husband, will play music for the event.

For more information, call 593-5041.

Mary Iselin

Iselin, a painter from Marlborough, specializes in light-filled paintings of farm animals, especially lambs. She also paints landscapes of Monadnock and a series of fantasy silver horses that she rarely displays outside of the holiday season.

Iselin says her guiding motto is to “paint what you love.” She got involved in art as soon as she could hold a pencil or crayon, and began selling artwork in high school and painting her way through college.

Frankie Brackley Tolman

Tolman’s paintings have been accepted into national, regional and local juried exhibits. Trying to use colors that are vibrant, Tolman says she draws her inspiration from the fields, farms forests and seacoasts in the Northeast.

Shape interests Tolman, and in her water color media, she reduces her subjects to simplified shapes, cluing in the viewer to how those images are connected to them and about their history.

Recently, Tolman has been working with texture to enhance the mystery and color of her paintings.

Phil Bean

Phil Bean works both in the studio as well as outdoors, creating “en plein air” paintings. Light and shadow interest Bean.

At one time, Bean lived in Alaska, where he acquired an interest and appreciation for the wilderness and the wonders of a rugged landscape. Although his paintings are generally of New England, his love of western landscape is a theme of his work.

Maureen Ahern

Maureen Ahern is exhibiting at Winterlude for the first time this year. Ahern’s paint and mixed media artwork is a new medium for the group.

Ahern’s subject is the ocean, and her mixed media attempts to capture the energy and contemplative qualities of these large bodies of water.

Colors shift in her work depending on the light source and the viewers’ perspective.

She has a B.F.A. and an M.A. in painting and has been exhibited regionally as well as in New York.

Deb Pero

Deb Pero is also a new addition to the artists’ guild. Pero’s style is referred to as “chiaroscuro,” which is characterized by a dramatic use of light, particularly in still life images.

According to Pero, she fell into still life painting by accident when she took a painting class while living in New Mexico years ago.

Landscapes, however, are her subject of choice. She has scenes from regional New England as well as from the Southwest.