Artist’s Statement

Over time, every artist hopes to develop a way of working that is a comfortable fit with their temperament and way of seeing. I like working from nature. I like the way working on site focuses my attention and demands quick decisions about color and light and about composition and mood. I like the way working “en plein air” forces me to be fully alive to the world around me and to be completely in the present. I like large gestures and simple shapes and I love the way the world offers up more paintings than I can possible paint. I like the way my small plein air paintings are as much about my struggle to make art as they are about the world they represent. They can be complete or they can begin a process of creating larger and more complicated pictures. I am an impatient compulsive sort of person and I want my work to be about me making gestures with energy and passion. As much as I can, I want the final version to represent what drew me to that subject in the first place. For me, a piece of art only succeeds if it celebrates being alive.

 

Emmy Savage is a landscape plein air and abstract painter living on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  She works in both oil and pastel.  Her most recent work in oil reflects a month long residency at the Vermont Studio Center, February 2008.