Sally Caswell
I am primarily an outdoor painter. A look around my studio reveals that 90% of my drawings and paintings are done from life in places that have a deep personal connection for me. My family origins are in Jamestown, RI, and its many facets continue to inspire my paintings as I go there often to paint en plein air. “High Tide at Wetherill” was painted there. Colorado and Northern California also share family roots. The marsh paintings are done in my back yard that overlooks a one-hundred acre salt marsh. It is a subject that I have painted in every mood, every time of day, and every season; yes, even bundled up with my easel in the snow, painting watercolors. Both my home and studio overlook this natural sanctuary that inspires me and my work every day.
My means of expression are the traditional media of painting, drawing and printmaking, such as intaglio and stone lithography. I am at home with the watercolor medium and enjoy its jewel-like colors of transparencies and glazes. In oils and acrylics, on paper or canvas, I continue working in the tradition of glazes over ground colors.
For me, these media offer a warmth and sensuousness relating to Earth and humanity. Since the early 1970's the complexities of form have fascinated me. Grounded in the textures derived from the Abstract Expressionists, my work reflects the spirit of the landscape, its richness of form and color, textures and patterns of nature. The frequent presence of water in my paintings, its reflections and fluidity, its necessity for life, holds for me the universal symbolic reflection of spirituality, much in the philosophical traditions of the Luminists.
My home is New England, near the ocean. My art reflects my observations and experiences of a long kinship with her traditions and her people. It is like the place. Its space is intimate and complex. Its landscape and people are craggy. There is a tenacity through struggle, a practicality and a spare but eternal Faith.
©2020 Sally Caswell