Paintings and Drawings from Nature

Works by Mary Page Evans

September 6, 2019 - October 13, 2019

Corkran Gallery

Artist Statement

“I am primarily a landscape painter.  I work directly from nature – en plein air.  I look at a specific landscape, establish its locale, the time of day, the quality of light, and paint it.  Becoming involved with its particularities, I get to know it as if I were painting a figure or a still life.  During the process, I am always creating and destroying until I arrive at the inevitability of this particular landscape.

Art history has always played an important role in my work.  Having absorbed the structural lessons of Cezanne and the “push-pull” principle of Hans Hoffman, I try to loosen the form and let color determine the structure and create the space.  I strive for a visual back and forth in the space resulting from forms and colors reacting to each other like music. Cezanne once said, “Painting from nature is not copying the object, but realizing one’s sensations.  When I paint the landscape, I feel like singing.” – Mary Page Evans

Biography

In 1984, artist Gene Davis described Mary Page Evans paintings as, “hymns of unadulterated joy.”  While Evans paints still lifes and images of the human form, it is her landscape and garden paintings created directly from nature, en plein air that capture this sentiment.  Evans exhibits in Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC.  She has artwork in numerous public and private collections such as: the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Delaware Art Museum, and the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

Image: “Mid Summer Hollyhocks” oil by Mary Page Evans