American landscape painter Mary Sipp-Green, based in the bucolic
Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts, is superlative in her ability to pull
in the viewer and transfer the accompanying emotions in her atmospheric
landscapes and seascapes. The intensely saturated colours in her works
evoke an immediate sense of place and a privileged window on an intimate
tableau. Sipp-Green achieves an ethereal, nuanced quality to her
paintings that imparts a refined, inimitable serenity. Many of the
subjects she paints - salt marshes, barns, meadows, rivers, and the
occasional cityscape - are captured in the beautiful light of dusk or a
luminescent sunrise. The effect is dreamy yet grounded and emotive.
Sipp-Green
states, "While my preferred medium has always been oil on linen, my
methods, techniques, and aesthetic aims have all undergone significant
transformations since I first began. I learned my craft in the studio,
painting still-lifes and portraits, as well as landscapes drawn directly
from nature. Over time, I became increasingly engaged with more
abstract and spiritual aspects of the landscape form and I began to
pursue a less representational, more expressive style." When describing
the 'diffuse quality of colour,' she explains, "I use many layers of
paint, allowing each to dry before the next is applied. Along the way,
the surface of the paint is often refigured in unpredictable ways, and
there is much that has to be scraped, sanded, destroyed and reapplied
before the essence of a place, its mood and atmosphere finally emerges
onto the canvas."
