Having evolved from hunter-gatherers, humans learned to think in nature.
The devastation of our habitats causes distress and despair, and we naturally find solace in the expression of landscape. Utilizing a familiar vernacular of landscape imagery, I explore psychological passage and growth: finding joy, accepting loss, releasing regret. In the way that fairy tales dramatize elements of real life, my paintings illuminate aspects of personal endeavor.
Whether the image is a shoreline or a forest, my subject is the importance of nature as a palliative to contemporary social malaise, with each piece a meditation on the commonality of human experience in the beauty of the natural world.
My landscape paintings represent my effort to depict the essence of a place or moment in nature through the evocation of my memories of that place, rather than through the faithful reproduction of specific landmarks. I rely on photographs as a form of note-taking, and along with quick sketches and occasional on-site studies, I use photos to compose each painting in the studio as a composite image.
My best work is usually sparked by a landscape which has elicited in me a strong emotional response. This could be a place I know intimately: coastal New England, the verdant valleys of Vermont where I live, or the lush woods and rolling fields of Virginia and Pennsylvania where I spent my childhood. It could also be a landscape which is moving by virtue of its sheer magnificence: Alaska’s inland waterway, the forests of the Pacific Northwest, and the spectacular mountains of Montana.
-Julia Purinton
When I first saw David Gallipoli’s stunning photographs of Yellowstone, I knew we shared both a deep love of the natural world and an artistic aesthetic. David’s work brings an intimacy to vast open spaces, and he finds humanity in grandeur. His appreciation of the subtle nuance of light and color in landscape photography may be the result of his long experience fishing the rivers of Montana or it may be some innate connection to the natural world; it’s probably both.
His imagery resonated with me immediately, despite my not having visited all of the places he photographs, because the moments he captures - the light on the water, the sun on the slopes, the mist in the trees - are so similar to the images that populate my own memories of summers up on the Sun River and autumn hikes in the mountains. The memories informed my paintings, and as I explored in paint and at a large scale the images he’d captured, the pictures took on lives of their own.
David was gracious in allowing me to work from his photographs, and I feel lucky to have found a talented collaborator. As he explores abstract composition, and captures unconventional scenes in unusually subtle and dramatic light, I feel inspired to explore the many ways we experience the splendor of the natural world.
-Julia Purinton
Julia Purinton graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Fine Arts, pursued a course of study at the School of Fine Arts in New York City, and now divides her time between Washington, DC and Vermont's Mad River Valley.
Her decorative painting company, Medusa Studio, provides custom murals for commercial and private interiors across the country, twice winning Best of Boston Awards for murals and decorative paint finishes.
I work in the hope that viewers will also be moved by these images, and reminded of the importance of a clean and diverse environment to our physical health, our psychological well-being, and our future as humans on our remarkable planet.
-Julia Purinton
To view more of Julia's work please go to :
http://medusastudio.com
https://www.instagram.com/medusastudio/