Featured Artist Claudia Brookes

Enjoy the charming portfolio of oil painter Claudia Brookes, who captures moments in time in her distinctive impressionist style. Visit her website for more.

 

 

I’ve been a professional artist for more than 25 years, painting in the American Impressionist tradition.

 

 

For most of those years, my focus has been on landscape painting en plein air—that is, painting on location, from life, without the use of photography. After participating in nearly 50 juried plein air competitions throughout the country and garnering numerous awards, I’ve turned in more recent years to creating smaller, locally themed works in my home studio for the galleries that represent me.

 

 

In the studio I’m aiming for the same freshness and sense of light I experience in the field, honed by my years of painting landscapes en plein air.

 

 

 

I’m drawn to beautiful light. That quality, rather than the subjects I choose, is the star of my impressionistic yet representational paintings. With my paintings, I hope to express the emotional nature of a place, so that others can see it as I do.

 

 

My paintings feature a colorist’s sensibility and visible brushstrokes. It is not hard to see that I love the quality of the paint itself on a surface.  Whether I am painting in oils or watercolors, I prefer to paint alla prima—“all-at-one-go.” Each stroke must count. There’s an expression I like that goes, “Painting is like golf. Whoever has the fewest strokes, wins.”

 

 

My paintings have no narrative, nor do they make a statement. I am told that most have a calm serenity, a hallmark of my choices of what and how I paint. These paintings have become my way of seeing the world, and I am happiest when I am painting. There’s always another painting out there, and the perfect light is waiting.

 

 

I am a Life Member of the Baltimore Watercolor Society, recognizing my 20-year mark as Signature Member, as well as an elected Artist Member of the Mid-Atlantic Plein Air Painters Association, a status I’ve held since 2010.

 

 

I am represented by the following galleries: Landmark Gallery, Kennebunkport, Maine, Argosy Gallery, Bar Harbor, Maine, and Pink Papaya, Cruz Bay, St. John, US Virgin Islands.

 

Claudia Brookes invites you to follow on Instagram and Facebook.

 

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