JESSE BLANCHARD
Photo by Margaret Orem Blanchard
 

For the Love of Color

I am a landscape painter combining the real, the abstracted and the imagined landscape. The results are abstract compositions comprised of a visual language of marks, squares, lines and forms. The landscapes I create are entirely imagined, but they reference the Caribbean and coastal waters (where I have lived and spent much time), as well as the plains, fields and mountains of Vermont (where I grew up) and New Mexico (where I currently live). Each piece references memories and imaginative re-creations of the places I have been—colors, textures, moods, and a sense of place . . .Initial "Expressionist" fields of paint enable each composition to form. Recurring themes in my work include: Windows (with the idea of looking in, past, or through); Houses (the shape of a house—roof, walls, windows); Mountains, Water, Boats and Trees (all references to places I have lived and been). Squares, lines, grids and marks reference windows, buildings, and landscape, while also providing balance, structure and interest in each composition. My newest work examines this structural interest in compositional patchworks of landscapes within landscapes, alongside decorative patterns and the symbols I have been acquiring in my years of painting.

Printmaking and mixed media work is an extension of painting for me. I use woodblocks and monotypes to create multi-layered images, building compositions in much the same way as painting. Mixed media work is often “under-painted” with a print or section of a print. The elements of one medium quite literally become the building blocks of another.

6 Red Vertical
Monotype on paper
24 x 18 inches
2007