Michelle C Mendez

I wish to emulate Albert Pinkham Ryder's passionate, adventurous, mythic, dream-like oils in the Romantic Tradition.  The "Flying Dutchman" just sends me. The genre of marine painting isn't the point.  It's the tale at sea, the allegory and his magnificent veils of color glazes, surface textures and sweeping gestural mark-making.  I want to create art that sparks and inspires, whether to calm,
comfort, or excite. 

 

For many years I worked exclusively in oil paint and discovered I could mimic similar effects with acrylics.  This has offered me a faster and less toxic way of working in the studio.  I can also paint directly
on paper with acrylic. 

 

The paper in this collection, nautical navigation charts, inspired me to take a leap back into seascapes. They were traversed by my late father, who passed recently.  He served twenty years as a member
of the Coast Guard Auxiliary.