When painting I draw equally upon personal experience and painting’s formal elements (color, line, form) to express the essence and structure of scenes that inspire me. Benefiting from oil paint’s pigment-laden physicality and workability over time, I simplify images and return to the canvas over and over, searching and mixing reflection into the process, to fully realize my vision.
My compositions often start during my travels near and far. Cursory visual notes jotted in sketchbooks capture images, colors and sensations. Back in my studio, I choose some of these images to journey with me onto canvas where they evolve in direct dialogue between my impressions and painting’s idiom of color, form and texture. My interest lies more in sharing my experience of the spaces we live in than in whom we may encounter in those spaces.
Many compositions spring from the visual pageantry and excitement of the FIFA World Cup matches. Selecting themes from drawings realized within the time constraint of a live TV broadcast, I re-open the game on a canvas field, playing out its rhythms in painting’s elements of form and color.
In addition to oil paint, I work in color pencil, oil pastel, watercolor and gouache. I have also developed a feltmaking technique based on the wet massage method using colorful fluffs and strands of semi-processed and dyed wool.
Painting can be many things; for me it provides a way to think about the world and express my ideas. Not only have the works of my painting heroes, past and present, enriched my vision but I am able to share my vision with others as I participate in this age-old tradition that renews itself with each generation.
Shelley Himmelstein
July 2011