New Directions    Solo Exhibition

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Artist Statement

My formal training and first artistic love was printmaking, but I found it easier to make my living designing gardens. Designing gardens is in many ways similar to composing a print or painting. The contours of a landscape become the canvas; the shape, texture and color of plants become the palette. One is constantly analyzing composition, color, form and scale. In the winter months when gardening season was over and I was back in my studio, I would find my artistic skills rusty but my vision enhanced.

"New Directions" celebrates my return as a fulltime artist. Another new direction: I'm returning as a painter, not a printmaker. While my earlier prints were in black and white, I transitioned into acrylic silkscreen for more color. The pigments I used with silkscreen mediums could also be used with water on paper to create greater color saturation and intensity. My watercolors, which are the focus of this show, are a fusion of some selected printmaking techniques and these intense pigments.

I paint scenes people don't stop to look at: swamps, patches of marsh grass, trees at a pond's edge. I'm endlessly fascinated by the complex pattern of plants, the reflections of the shoreline, and the colors of the seasons. The details in my paintings create mood: the sense of mystery one finds on a mist shrouded pond in the early morning, the tranquility of still water reflections on a sunny day.

I will never tire of these images; many of the paintings in this show are of a pond and forest that have been in my family for over 100 years. It is a place of solitude, renewal, and inspiration, and I delight in being able to share it with others.

~Liz Toffey
April 4, 2008