reNEWal: a celebration

by Lucie BAuse

ARTIST STATEMENT:

My studio is the place where I exercise my choice, where I express my unique perspective from my life experience. I love the autonomy I feel while painting, and I process and express my life experiences from here.

Over the past 2 years of COVID-19, it has been a more extreme experience. Sometimes in the brilliant light, and sometimes in the darkness of the shadows, sometimes a bit of both or oscillating between.

I love to play with color and explore different color schemes and combinations, discovering the dynamics of different colors in relationship to one another.  I love energetic color and high contrast values that I feel help to express a range of experience, including highlights and deep shadows.

Through painting, I choose to celebrate life, even during these very difficult times.

I remember that I am inspired by the natural world, so I paint nature-based themes.

I prefer painting the natural world familiar to me including the mountain landscape in its various times of day and seasons, as well as its wildlife inhabitants.

I enjoy presenting dynamic relationships between elements in my paintings, such as the trees dancing with the sky, or the contours of the earth embracing the wandering river, or the Raven connecting with the full moon. I try to represent a level of reality where the elements are animated and interacting.

I also love to use pattern in my work as a visual language to reference the natural cycles and which affect all life on this planet. These patterns permeate our lives and connect us to other living things. Patterns of life: birth, growth, adaptation, evolution, transition, death, regeneration and renewal. Things we all experience as part of life, unifying things that connect us all.

Nature and painting inspire this in me, and I hope to inspire gratitude, appreciation and celebration for all of life through my artwork.