Pencil, paint and brush are extensions of my thought world. I feel inexpressibly gratified when my mind, heart, and hands are all engaged in a project. There’s a quiet rejoicing that accompanies the work, an appreciation for the life in and around me. There is a duality involved. Sometimes there is the desire to make something that is functional also beautiful, like a sign. There are times, too, when I make art for more elusive reasons, because I want to convey or explore a deep connection I feel to a place, to capture something fragile, or I want to share a feeling too large to keep inside. I’ve learned to trust the intuitions that nudge me to consider new themes, and sometimes work from dreams. Art-making can be solitary, and so I welcome those commissions that bring an opportunity for collaboration. Since 1980 to the present, I have had an art and design practice focused on illustration and signage. I am involved from the concept stage with the client, through to the fabrication of the final physical product. I have painted many surfaces besides canvas, from trucks, boats, furniture and walls, to glass and wooden buckets at the request of nobility and truck drivers. I called myself a limner, the colonial term for the artist.

The Blue Hole, 1959

At age nine, I made a large pencil and crayon drawing of a place we called the Blue Hole in Ohio. The drawing won an award, a series of art lessons at the Toledo Museum of Art. My intent then was to honor the impression the place made on me, to show the different trees – the oak, the pine, the willow – and to tell about the pond and water wheel, the flying birds and squirrel gathering nuts. You can’t see me in the tiny image, but I am throwing a rock into the Blue Hole, “making my mark.” Today I look at it, and see a mission statement. I know from my life’s experience how precious our natural resources are. Not just for the economics of our very existence, but for the human soul. Every child needs to experience the panorama of natural diversity, and we need to ensure that they can. My art implies this belief.

Our family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1960, where I worked on the family golf course (painting everything orange, green and white!) and continued early art training at Schramm Galleries. After high school graduation in 1968, I ventured north to study art at Windham College in Putney, Vermont. It was there, in the fields and slopes of the Connecticut River Valley, that I fell in love with the New England landscape. A semester in Barcelona exposed me to rich Catalan art, especially that of Antoni Gaudí. Later, I lived, worked, and raised two sons in Jamestown and Saunderstown, Rhode Island from 1976 to 2002. In 1992, I earned a BA in Art Studio from the University of Rhode Island, where my concentration was on printmaking and art history. I’ve also studied oil painting over the years under Gregg Kreutz. I returned to the inspiring Connecticut River Valley for graduate work in 2002. I wanted to understand more about the physicality of the outdoor environment, and earned a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture in 2005 from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I focused on cultural landscapes, and wrote my master’s project on stone wall preservation. Yet, I still feel the need to paint for dear life.

Priorities at the Land Grant University, 2001

While I have learned through printmaking that there is beauty in method, I do prefer to work in a less determinate way, allowing opportunity for the spontaneous brainstorms and events that are always brewing to influence the work. Oil paint offers an ideal medium for me. Painting with linseed-based pigments is rich in history, ingredients, and hue. It is tactile, fragrant, forgiving and alive. From the delicate Linum species, or Flax, comes the linen ‘canvas’ and the linseed oil of traditional oil painting. There is a substance to it, and an endless variety of color and effect. Ochre is always on my palette. There are infinite shades, coming as it does from different places on the earth. It is a friendly companion and mix for most other colors, lending a warm glow without domination. I use spike oil of lavender, an old fluid used as a solvent, instead of toxic thinners. Using these ingredients is a sensual meditation for me on source/resource, and human inventiveness. I value the evidence left to us by other hands, working thoughtfully in the past.

Martha's House, Carr Lane, 1978

When people see my work, I want them to pause because they are touched somehow. I’d like them to take that pause and wonder, search, feel a stir that might generate some deep musings on their own experience of this life, perhaps open an inner door, and smile.

Sunderland, Massachusetts, July 2006

~~~~~~~~Back Home or to Art

© mary krochmalny everett