Today, I retreated atop a wide slab of a rust-colored boulder and listened to the thrash of the ocean on the coast of Monhegan Island as my bare legs out in front of me catch a few droplets of the water’s white foam. I have never been to Monhegan Island, a remote and rustic island ten miles off the coast of Maine. Cindy House’s pastel work, “Leaving Monhegan II,” invited me in and transcended my senses to this place and space. Devoid of any figures, House captures a moment in time within the familiar; her keen observations express nature’s beauty layered through the sublime. I became completely lost in her work.
Image Credit: Cindy House
My love for painting is centered on works in oil; I love its texture and an artist’s choice of colors can evoke deep emotions within me. Cindy has opened me to a new medium, pastels. On her website she writes, “Soft pastels are the purest and simplest form of artist color. They consist of pure pigment and just enough binder to enable them to be molded into sticks. Pastels are considered paintings since color is applied in masses rather than in lines that form the basis of drawings. What a different looking experience when form and shape are created through “masses of color” versus line. Her precise melding of colors composed across the canvas sweeps me into her visual experience, her feelings of this space on an island, in nature’s solitude.
Currently, “Leaving Monhegan II,” is part of the exhibition, “The Art and Artists of Monhegan Island: Selections from the Charles J. and Irene Hamm Collection of Coastal Art,” at the New Britain Museum of American Art until August 30, 2020. You can learn more about the artist on her website, https://cindyhouse.com/.