|
Biography:
Judy Segal is a watercolor and pastel artist living and painting
in Freeport, Maine. She is mostly self-taught, being drawn to
drawing and painting since she was a child. Her grandmother was
a watercolor artist, and had a strong influence on Judy’s
own pursuit of art. Judy spent her early years in Minnesota,
where a love of wilderness and the northern landscape was born.
She has lived in Maine since 1970, and has explored much of Maine
by land and water.
Judy participates as an artist with “Designing Women”.
This is a group of women artisans who feature their work in group
shows several times a year. She is a member of the Freeport Art Club and Freeport Creative Arts.
Artist’s Statement:
“Two of my favorite subjects to paint are flowers and
the sea. There is something magical in the simplest flowers,
and they evoke a lot of happiness for me. I have lived in Maine
since 1970, and find the ocean an unending source of peace and
pleasure. Through painting these subjects I have the pleasure
of exploring their beauty and spending extended time in their
presence, throughout the year.
Elizabeth Coatsworth speaks of deeply loved places, noting,
they
“must be sung and painted and praised until each takes
on the gentleness of the thing long loved, and becomes an unconscious
part of us and we of it. And if Americans are to become really
at home in America it must be through the devotion of many
people to many small, deeply loved places. The field by the
sea, the single mountain peak seen from a man’s door,
the island of trees and farm buildings in the western wheat,
must be sung and painted and praised until each takes on the
gentleness of the thing long loved, and becomes an unconscious
part of us and we of it.”
This quote really resonated with me the first time I read it,
and still does today. When I’m working on a painting, I
spend a lot of time looking, and getting to know the subject,
whether it be an animal, flower, ocean or landscape….part
of this is a meditative process. Painting gives me an opportunity
to sing my own praises about this beautiful earth that we are
blessed to be on for a short time.
|
