Painting
My painting work is strongly informed by the Luminism movement of the US art movement, focused around the Hudson River School. Established as a response to European impressionism, Luminism focuses on capturing the ephemerality of natural light with a lens that romanticizes the US ‘West’. Similarly, my work also focuses on landscapes with dramatic light, exploring the boundary between impressionism and surrealism. Through a wide range of media, I explore how texture can be formed through value, color, and material. My subjects are chosen as local landscapes that caught my attention, prompting me to render the world from my perspective.
Woods
These pieces explore scenes I found while hiking on different local trails. I took down the basic layout of the scene on site, then took a reference photo. Later, I went back in with values and texture to create depth, warmth, and vibrancy. I also experimented with changing the time of day, shifting these scenes from day to night, dawn to dusk. Some elements are exaggerated, but mostly this work remains realistic. The usage of oil pastel adds a warmth and fluidity to the natural light in these scenes.
Chalk Pastel on U-Art
Oil pastel on toned paper
Acrylic paint on canvas
Surreal
These pieces, while still landscapes, focus on exaggerating the atmosphere that I experienced. In one instance, intensifying the colors to create a violent, other-worldly sunset throws the whole scene off-balance. The other focuses on removing detail and replacing it with gestural chalk marks to leave the impression of an airy, light scene.
Oil pastel on U-Art
Chalk pastel on U-Art
Winter
These pieces explore how snow blankets the world, softening edges and diffusing light. Again more surrealist, with the encaustic landscape hinting at abstraction, these pieces explore the way light moves across a scene covered in white. To achieve the chunky, fluid blending of snow reflecting light, I explored different media and found oil pastel to be much better at capturing snow than chalk pastel.
Encaustic on wood
Chalk pastel on U-Art
Man-Made
In this last section, I’ve included some more realistic works. While there are discernible objects in each, from a sailboat to a streetlamp, these pieces explore impressionistic mark making. I explored rendering different textures with varying tones and chunky, thick layers of lights and darks. For rain, I played around with how to get the effect of light diffusing, both on the trees and from the streetlights. While I enjoy these more realistic paintings, I still focused on the natural light and textures.
Chalk pastel on U-Art
Oil pastel on U-Art
Chalk pastel on U-Art