Doreen Currie
Impressionistic Oil Paintings
“If I hadn’t been a painter, I would have raised chickens.”
~ Grandma Moses “To have a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong.” ~ Joseph Chilton Paerce. “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher |
My name is Doreen Currie. I am a fourth-generation native of Latrobe, PA and I still reside on a portion of my great grandparents’ farm. I studied art and design at Seton Hill University and have taken numerous workshops with many accomplished and well-known artists. In 2004, I began to transition from watercolor to primarily oil medium, which sparked an interest in Plein Air painting. As a child, I was always asking my parents to help me take my easel outdoors, well before I knew the term “Plein Air”, which is French for “in open air” or painting outside from life.
I wake up…the sun is out, the day seems pleasant…I grab my French easel, (invented in the 1870s, about the same time that putting paint into tubes was devised)…a backpack holds turpentine, linseed oil, brushes, a small sketchbook. I am heading out with much the same equipment that Van Gogh used more than a century earlier when he painted “The plain of Auvers”. I take the same paint box I used in college in the late 1960s. My most modern convenience aside from he car that takes me to the paint site would be a camera — to record the change of light or something I may miss or forget. I almost always turn toward the country, farmlands, a strategically plowed field, some cattle grazing…the sunshine on a hillside. A wise teacher told me years ago to paint what you know and I have always loved the countryside of Pennsylvania. Sadly, technology and urban sprawl is making it harder and harder to find a working farm and a peaceful field. The plein air world I seek is the one I remember from the 1950s. I truly hope my paintings will inspire you to take a Sunday drive (remember those) through the countryside. Wind down the windows and smell the air. Check out the many different colors of greens, and the varied colors in the sky, as well as the formations of the clouds. In our busy world, many of us forget the true beauty that lies all around us. An artist sees riches that most people never notice. I hope you will take the time to notice them. |
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301 West Main St.
Ligonier, PA 15658 Visit us in historic Ligonier!
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