Artists embrace nature & history

Lee Reyes

Gold Country Artists Gallery, an awardwinning artists’ cooperative in Placerville, features the work of Carol Quinn, Michael Maloney and Melissa Bruno in March.

Loving light

Quinn loves the strong, golden light that transforms everything it touches, particularly during late afternoon and evening, what she calls the “Golden Hour.” Living in the foothills of El Dorado County, the surrounding natural landscapes grace her paintings and fulfill her desire “… to connect emotionally with the viewer by drawing them in with the comforting feeling of familiar scenery that provides a beautiful respite from a busy world.”

While Quinn paints plein air, or in the outdoors, she often takes reference photos from different viewpoints for use in her compositions. After some rough sketching on the panel, she applies a layer of underpainting. Depending upon what she decides as the predominant palette of color, this transparent layer creates a deep glow she describes as “the tones that pop through in random places between the brush strokes to create a pleasing vibration.” She lifts paint in other areas of light and adds thinly applied darker tones for shadow, connecting them to provide a strong underpinning to the overall design. While she uses paint to create that signature glow, it is Quinn’s own inner light that truly brings her work to life.

During a visit to Yosemite, she stood on the banks of the Merced River, and looking up she saw Half Dome looming above. “It stopped me in my tracks, and struck me with awe,” she said. Inspired, she recreated both the scene and her overwhelming feeling of amazement in her painting, “Awe Inspiring.” The viewer stands with her on the edge of the river with its bright reflections of trees, sky and mountain. She guides the eye through a line of trees to the majestic precipice rising beyond, bathed in glorious patterns of light, shadow and a palette of colors that change depending on the time of day.

Quinn’s process of creating a painting begins long before she picks up a paintbrush. It is her nature to always observe the world around her, studying the landscape and what inhabits it for certain combinations of light and dark that set the stage for a composition.

One day near sunset while in the hills above Petaluma, she observed a bank of shadow quickly moving across a field where horses and cattle grazed. Compelled to memorialize the moment, her painting “Evening’s Song” reflects her love for the design of light and shadow she observed there.

On a visit to an organic farm in Petaluma, she noticed old barns with people working within the surrounding rows of flowers and vegetables. Loving the colors and textures, she decided to paint “100% Organic.”

“I pay attention to creating a path for the viewer’s eye to travel through my paintings using edges, contrast and directional line,” Quinn explained. From the rows of lavenders and leafy greens to the rolling hills and bright clouds in the distance, her painting cultivates feelings of calm and a bit of nostalgia for a world that, for a moment in time, seems