Colleen is an American artist who lives and works in Northern Michigan. She is interested in capturing the magical and ephemeral beauty of nature in gestural forms and bold impressionistic colors. Colleen paints landscapes en plein air, as well in the studio and murals. Colleen’s work focuses on landscapes, waterscapes, figures and painting the flowers grown in her gardens.
Artist Statement
I work from observation and I’m interested in what exists between abstraction and recognition. My paintings explore the play of light reflections on water, windows, and mirrors. My subjects range from landscapes to still lifes made up of glass and abstracted floral elements to figures and self portraiture with mirrored abstractions of the figure. When I paint outside en plein air or inside the studio I seek to translate my immediate surroundings. The paintings have become a record of the places I have travelled and lived. I work in oil, acrylic, watercolor and gouache. My color palette is highly saturated and vibrant with a focus on large forms and shadows. Gestural marks are layered with thick applications of juicy paint set against thin flowing watercolor washes. The observed space is simplified to a mix of organic and geometric forms as I try to capture the essence of the subject.
Colleen is represented in the following Galleries,
Main Street Gallery, Leland, Michigan
Somebody’s Gallery, Petosky, Michigan
Visionary Art Collective, Brooklyn NY
Colleen attended the inaugural class of the South Carolina Governor’s School of the Arts and then earned her BFA in painting with a dual major in Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute. She completed her MFA in Studio Art in Dallas, Texas at Southern Methodist University’s Meadows School of the Arts in 2011. Her work is in private collections across the country.