Nancy Varipapa
Artist Statement
My painting is an emotional response to color. Through brilliant color, I elicit feelings such as excitement, melancholy and joy. After mixing each hue, I work quickly with my palette knife to juxtapose a collaboration of vivid and complex shades. I respond viscerally with and to each color, working to create my own feeling of balance and conflict in the painting where the colors are intertwined in a constant dialogue. Thus, it is not the specific shapes, the scale or the composition that concern me, but the way these elements are molded by color to create a whole.
The harmonious distribution of color used throughout the canvas blends the background, the foreground and the painting’s composition into a single plane. When viewers look at my painting they will not see a vase of flowers or a portrait or a landscape, but an intuitive celebration of color that within contains the subject.The many layers of paint give the work an additional textural and sculptural quality. The viewer may feel the need to touch my paintings because the experience is more than visual, but tactile as well.
My art is influenced by the subtle hues of Monet, and inversely, the bold colors of Van Gogh. Most importantly, I draw my inspiration from the colors of nature and their ever-changing harmonies.
Bio
EDUCATION:
-Vander Zee School of Painting, VA, 2004-10-Larry Horowitz Workshop Plein Aire, DE, 2007
-Torpedo Factory, VA 2001-04
-Tim Bell Workshops, oil painting, DE, 2000,2001,2001
-Art History Johns Hopkins University, 1980
-Music Appreciation Johns Hopkins University, 1980
-Graduated Union Memorial Hospital School of Nursing 1976
EXHIBITIONS:
Crossroads Art Center, Richmond, VA, Permanent“Clearly Color” with Jill Finsen, Vander Zee Gallery, VA 2010
Solo Exhibition, Crossroads Art Center, Richmond, VA, 2010
Solo Exhibition, Hill and Knowlton, Washington, DC 2010
Gary Fisher Gallery, Washington, DC 2010
Vander Zee Gallery Annual Show, Alexander, VA,2009
Fall at the Findings Gallery, Findings Gallery, Stroudsburg, PA 2009
Vander Zee Gallery Painters, Fort Lewis Lodge, Millsboro, VA, 2009
Exhibition of Vander Zee Gallery Studio Painters, Alexandria, VA 2008
COLLECTIONS:
CNMRT, Dover, DEMr. Scott Geraghty, Regional Vice President of the Ritz-Carlton
MEMBERSHIPS:
Vander Zee Professional Art GuildRehoboth Art League
