Nancy Edmond
Before I paint I need to feel inspired, which to me is a feeling of being light of heart and full of wonder. I can tell when I need to paint because I begin to have internal conversations about what I am observing in the moment. These conversations usually include colors of paints I will use "quinicridone gold, sap green and alizeran crimson flower beds, watery ultra marine skys filled with cereulean/sepia/ prussian blue thunderheads." I've been seen swooping my hands across the sky or stippling leaves along the horizon, as though no one can see me. I've been know to name mud puddles, chocolate milk or cafe ou lait (which to me is a matter of adding red paint or not.)
My inspiration is the natural world and historical content and tends toward the visual: color (muted or loud and splashy), weather (crystal cold and brilliant or misty), reflections (watery or sharp), light and shadowed content, moss on boulders in Rattlesnake Gutter. Just smelling a musty old building is enough to make me want to paint it. The one exception to all of this -- I am experimenting with painting neon signs in the night sky from photos from Provincetown and Route 66 out west.
I tend to paint what I know so much of my work includes Leverett homes, barns, ponds, people and animals. I attribute this love of place to my having moved so often as a child. We have lived in Leverett for 30 years now, so this is my home.
Although I have taken a few painting classes, I am, for the most part, self-taught. Water color is my medium of choice because of the way colors flow into each other as they do in the natural world. Generally I take photos first and work from them indoors.
A word about the two paintings I have submitted:
I was simplyby the contrast of colors in the yellow roses and the delicate way the petals change colors.
My great grandfather, Joseph Duguay, was a fisherman who sailed on a Grand Banks Schooner out of Shippegan Island, New Brunswick in the late 1800's. I was inspired to paint this from an early black and white photograph of their ship because of the obvious snow squall and as a reminder our family's history. .
