STATEMENT

The visual language of landscape is one that we most fundamentally share. Sky, trees, water: these are some of the most basic visual concepts that structure our perception of reality. But for all the commonality in these concrete objects, for each of us the experience of seeing is slightly different, being inevitably inflected by the perception of the observer.

As a perceptual painter, Angela translates her observations of nature into a personal dialect of color, shape, line and light, expressive marks that both describe and negate their subject matter. Using this unique language, she is able to evoke more than the landscape in her atmospheric work, imbuing it with added purpose and clarity of vision.

Beginning on location, Angela’s process moves from the generation of small plein air paintings or drawings to larger studio work. The multiple steps of interpretation allow her to both capture the immediacy of her ever-shifting nature settings, and to meditate deeply and constructively on her pieces in the more formal and removed space of the studio. Her work typically moves from a depiction of concrete details into an intensified geometry, pushing toward abstracted shapes that are reminiscent of known forms but that have a purpose in the painting other than merely describing that known form. Her visual exploration of the natural world also regularly includes painting from the figure, as well as mixed media collages combining fragments of her drawings and paintings with work from her early childhood to the present. Angela typically works in series, painting through an idea resolution and then making further way forward to a new piece as the outcome of this process.

While her painting is direct and confident, she also takes risks regularly and remains open to happy accident and creative chance: the way that a brush full of paint feels its way around the arc of a shoreline, inadvertently dragging bright green through pale blue. Contained in the open space between communication and doubt, Angela’s work is in a constant state of evolution.

Bio

Angela Saxon lives and works in beautiful northern Michigan near Traverse City — surrounded by the spectacular Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. She received a BFA in painting from Indiana University. Recent painting residencies have included Rome and the Sabina region, Italy; Tuscany and Chianti regions, Italy; Umbria, Italy; Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico; Palm Springs, California; Glen Arbor, Michigan. Her paintings are shown in galleries throughout the US and her work is held in both private and public collections; she also undertakes commissions.