Welcome to My Art Website!
2020 Update:I haven't been posting any new work on my site the past few years since I've been taking a time-out from oil painting to learn watercolor. Watercolor used to intimidate me, but now I'm thoroughly enjoying its quirks and steep learning curve.
I trust that my oil painting will benefit from the watercolor side-trip when I return to it. In fact the reason I took up watercolor is to facilitate doing many more studies and experiments before undertaking large oil paintings. My overall aim is to simplify my painting designs in order to make more clear, powerful statements.
I've been doing mostly experimental plein air studies.
2014 Update:
I haven't posted many new works on my site in the past several years since I've continued to work primarily on two series of large works that I won't post until after their completion. For the two series, I've done about 160 new paintings, many large and most showing a lot of growth and artistic development.
If I could foresee having the time to project manage exhibitions and had the space to store the frames, I'd start to approach galleries to exhibit them. But my income-earning career is demanding more time than ever these years and I'm out of storage space for frames, so all that new work is just languishing in storage for now. Those paintings can be viewed electronically upon request.
This winter I did quite a bit of life drawing. Not only was it a thoroughly enjoyable activity and great practice, but it reminded me how much I have always loved drawing. I've posted a handful of the drawings on my Drawings page.
2007 provided extraordinary opportunity, first to paint in Italy with a group of fellow artists, and then to attend master artist Scott Christensen's 10 day intensive workshop in Idaho. Both of those plein air experiences and another outdoor Vermont workshop in late 2006 were so fantastic that, through the rest of 2007, I couldn't resist continuing to paint en plein air back home in New England. I was eager to put into practice all I had learned from Scott Christensen and Albert Handell.
Despite having painted a good deal in 2007, since I was challenged by limiting myself to much shorter sessions than I can actually handle, most of 2007's works are not worthy of posting or have joined the hundreds of other in-process paintings that fill shelves in my studio. I keep hoping to have time to finish at least the best of them, but time is in short supply and too often I'm more inclined to be outdoors and begin new works than resume work on unfinished ones.
While I have every intention of carrying out the series of large studio paintings I committed to in 2005, my self-assigned MFA program equivalent, currently I'm taking a time-out to honor my recognition of the need to revisit drawing skills and explore new ideas and techniques through plein air practice. I trust this "back-to-basics" and further development will make the studio paintings stronger when I return to them.
2005 News:
I'm excited this year about a new series of paintings I've just begun. Since this will be a large body of new work that I don't anticipate completing for many years, it'll be a while before any of these works are exhibited and then posted. I consider this project to be the equivalent of a Master's in Fine Art degree program. I'll refrain from revealing too many details until the series is completed, but I just wanted to give you a sneak preview that there'll be some new work coming. What I will say is that this is a series of studio paintings that are larger and significantly more complex than the smaller pieces I've primarily been doing since I've been working mostly en plein air. I encourage you to send me an email if you'd like me to let you know when I finish this series, if you'd like to be among the first to see it.
Upcoming International Exhibition: I've been invited to exhibit in Paris this month in the 1st International Fair devoted to small format in contemporary art (officially: 1er Salon International des petits format dans l'art d'aujourd'hui a Paris). Click here if you want to see the the show invitation.
I've just exhibited in the inaugural exhibition of Belmont Gallery of Art, my town's brand new, very attractive gallery. The juried show included one work each of 59 selected Belmont artists, most of whom are also professional artists. There's great enthusiasm as this exhibition has brought to light so many talented artists whom there's been no way to know about or meet!
News of 2003 and 2004:
I was very fortunate to get to go on three very fun and visually
inspiring trips in '03 and '04. I was also lucky to be able to do
all my photography (one of my long-time avid interests) using a new
digital camera. The availability thereafter of thousands of terrific
digital images sparked a new form of creative joy from creating quite
elaborate photo books, which made use of a layout skill I've always
really enjoyed using. The process was creatively enlivening and
addictive. I spent many hundreds of hours on image selection,
retouching in Photoshop, and laying out and printing the four books.
I've consciously elected to delay starting any more because I want
ed to get back to painting, but I got SUCH a
great kick out of the projects. As a painter, the downside of being
so lucky with trips and photography and book-making joys was that I
was so busy training for and taking the trips and making the books
that I didn't do get to do much painting those two years, given
that, like most artists today, I also have a day job. That said,
during the 2004 trip to the Dordogne in France, I did get to paint
for a week, and I also got out to do several days of plein air
painting on Cape Ann in the Fall. However, I haven't yet gotten to
finish most of those paintings. Now that I'm into my new series, who
knows if and when I will. As it is, I already have about 80
paintings to finish! I also haven't yet photographed the ones I did
finish. Someday!
Written in 2003 when I finished Phase II of the site development, the addition of the detail pages: I'm excited to share this site with you! All the full-size image pages that give details about each painting are now available if you haven't checked out the site in awhile.
There is now a Current Directions page. This page brings together the paintings that are representative of the style and subject matter I'm most interested in pursuing farther, now and into the future. It's the electronic equivalent of the slide sheet artists used to send to galleries. It also provides an index to the largest paintings in my collection.
I added five new paintings in 2003. There's a painting of pumpkins on the Still Life page, three new farm/rural scenes on the New England page, and a new Gloucester Harbor painting on the Boston page.
To view the plein air paintings done during my 2001 trip to France, see my Europe Landscapes page.
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Julliette Carignan - Impressionist Painter, Belmont, MA |
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More coming here soon!
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Julliette Carignan - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |