What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones.
- Jean Dubuffet

NEW WORKS:  a collection of Appalachian objects

      Softly structured arrangements of natural forms that challenge traditional views of beauty, but also embrace them.  This series explores my

fascination with nature in its extreme contradictions of light and dark, calm and disruption. 

    This group of paintings, started in late 2011 and early 2012, marks a “coming full circle” for me.  I've experimented with landscape

abstraction in earlier periods of my career, so this series isn't an altogether new direction.  During the past few years, my desire to produce paintings that are more intuitive and less Euro-centric in format has been a catalyst for change.  

    As with my earlier, more traditional landscapes, I have used nature based imagery.   The difference now, however, is that I am focusing on more specific objects and sometimes just parts of those objects.  My observations of the woods in the back of my house offer an ever changing arrangement of colors, forms and patterns.   And, while I do some on-site sketches, I am more likely to draw on the memory of those observatons rather than recreating a landscape "scene".   Each piece is started with a combination of gestural lines and ambiguous shapes.  Lines, shapes and colors are added and taken away in layers until the composition takes form.  Before a work is in its final stages, I photograph it and digitally alter the color in Illustrator.  I use these digital “maquettes” to guide me with my palette as I complete the painting.

mid-winter, #4   Feb. , 2012 30 x 30 inches    oil on canvas

pine woods, Jan. 2012                    36 x 40, 1/12   oil on canvas

night trees, Jan. 2012   24 x 36, 1/12    oil on canvas

southern light, Dec. 2011 81 x 50 (triptych, ea. panel 27 x 50)

Copyright © 2003 Miles Studio

webmaster: Cathryn Miles