artist statement | bio | Grace Mitchell

For over twenty years I painted the marshes and tidal creeks around my home and studio in Piermont, NY, a small village on the west bank of the Hudson River a few miles north of Manhattan. My first solo show with a newly opened gallery in the village was called “Ancient Rhythms,” a reference to the eternal shifting of the tides in this “river that runs both ways,” and to the vital process of life going on unseen in a large tidal marsh that is a predominant feature of the area. I studied and learned what I could about the incredible productivity of the estuarine system and its role in the life of the marine world, an ancient relationship that sustains the foundation of the food chain on earth. I painted the land and water of the marsh using a glazing technique employed by earlier generations of painters to produce a luminosity and depth in the surface, evoking a sense of age and mystery as I contemplated the essence of the underlying “ancient rhythms” of our existence.

During the years spent painting the marshes and perfecting my technique, I began to hear more and more about the decline of the oceans. Having grown up in southern New Hampshire in a family that originally “came to fish” in colonial times, the idea that the vast fish populations of the northeast were nearing extinction came as a great shock.

A visit to the Prout’s Neck, Maine, home and studio of America’s great marine artist Winslow Homer a few years ago started me on my own voyage to the sea. Homer’s sea was an ageless, immense and in some ways terrible force. His paintings depicted the struggle of man with the overwhelming power of nature, the fight for survival in an unforgiving environment that has manifested itself in the arts since the first crude scratchings on walls. In his time, men still fished from small boats, and the sea claimed endless lives. In some of his later paintings, no human subjects appeared, and the sea was still omnipotent – crashing on the rocks beyond his studio walls.

But the large steam powered ships were already on the horizon, poised to begin a massive assault that in the twentieth century would lay waste to vast areas of the sea.
And so a painter of the sea today is faced with something different. In the twenty-first century the sea is seen as imperiled, threatened by human source pollution, global warming, extinctions. But of course we are still entirely dependent upon the continuation of the “ancient rhythms” which support our lives, and so may be in even greater peril than ever before. Many of the titles of the current paintings are taken from Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” which I’ve always thought of in terms of a human propensity to destroy the very things which sustain us. I continue to use the same glazing technique to create what I hope to be objects of quiet beauty and contemplation of our relationship to the powers of the sea and whole of the natural world. According to one reviewer, the paintings “hum with premonition….” I hope some will stop to listen.


EDUCATION:

Grace Mitchell holds a BA in Visual Arts from State University of NY and is currently represented by Allen Sheppard Gallery in NYC. Her paintings are in many corporate and private collections throughout the world.


PAST EXHIBITIONS:

Solo Exhibitions

Allen Sheppard Gallery, NY, NY October 2007
Allen Sheppard Gallery, NY, NY May 2003
Allen Sheppard Gallery, NY, NY April 2001
Allen Sheppard Gallery, NY, NY October 1999
Allen Sheppard Gallery, NY, NY October 1998
Allen Sheppard Gallery, Piermont, NY October 1997
Allen Sheppard Gallery, Piermont, NY October 1996
Allen Sheppard Gallery, Piermont, NY October 1995
Allen Sheppard Gallery, Piermont, NY October 1994
St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, N.Y. – January 1991
Piermont Public Library, Piermont, NY – November 1989
Little Freight Station Gallery, Sparkill, NY – October 1983-January 1984

Group Shows

Allyn Gallup Gallery, Sarasota, FL June 2007
David Floria Gallery, Aspen, CO March 2007
Allen Sheppard Gallery, NY, NY July 2006
Blue Hill Cultural Center, Pearl River, N.Y. – March-July 1994
Hopper House Members’ Show, Nyack, N.Y. – January 1994
Piermont Public Library Benefit Invitational, Piermont, N.Y. – December 1993
Barbara Gibson Fine Arts Gallery, Nyack, N.Y. – December 1993
Barbara Gibson Fine Arts Gallery, Nyack, N.Y. – November 1993
Empire State College Student/Alumni Show, Hartsdale, N.Y. – May 1992
Piermont Library Benefit Invitational, Piermont, N.Y. – December 1992
Empire State College Student/Alumni Show, Hartsdale, N.Y. – May 1991
Hopper House Members’ Show, Nyack, N.Y. – January 1991
Piermont Library Benefit Invitational, Piermont, N.Y. – December 1991
Empire State College Student/Alumni Show, Hartsdale, N.Y. – May 1990
Hopper House Members’ Show, Nyack, N.Y. – January 1990
Piermont Public Library Benefit Invitational, Piermont, N.Y. – December 1990
Rockland County Historical Society ”The Artist’s Eye on Rockland County”, New City, N.Y. – March 1986
Rockland County Historical Society ”Best of Bear Mountain”, New City, N.Y. –
February-March 1984
Hopper House Members’ Show, Nyack, N.Y. – February 1984
Piermont Public Library Christmas Show, Piermont, N.Y. – December 1983
Rockland Center for the Arts Members’ Show – January 1983
Hopper House Members’ Show, Nyack, N.Y. – January 1983
Fall Festival of the Arts, Rockland Community College, Suffered N.Y. – September 1982

SOME NOTES ON THE TECHNIQUE:

The unique quality of these paintings is created by a process of building layer upon layer of microscopically thin glazes of paint, sanding and scraping of part of the layers between coats, and further reduction with steel wool. The surface is covered with distress marks which are then
partially filled in and covered over, almost entirely in some and very little in others, with further layers of paint. This is all deliberate, is part of the art, related to my attitude toward the painting of landscape. Landscape painters, obviously, paint the land, and the air, and the water, and so forth. In so doing, they are also painting a reflection of their cultural ideas about the natural world. Painting styles have changed in different historical periods. In urbanized, post-industrial society, the primal images retain a power to evoke an emotional response. Here the broken quality of the surface contributes to the luminosity of the painting, and also speaks to the issue of landscape in the last moments of the twentieth century, an era which has seen the devastation of the land by human beings reaching epidemic proportions. In this situation, one cannot consider painting perfectly “pretty” landscapes, or even grand and heroic landscapes. The paintings are flawed, and beautiful, and they give one that tension to consider. They take a long time to accomplish, but the thin glazes are delicate, as some feel the earth to be, and the art must be handled with care. However, the impact is strong and enduring, as the earth ultimately is, whether we survive our treatment of it or not.