NYC-based fine artist Eleanor Gilpatrick primarily creates representational artworks, painting landscapes and the figure, with an occasional still life or abstract. She works in acrylic on canvas. Prior to her art career, Eleanor Gilpatrick, PHD, was professor at the School of Health Sciences, Hunter College, City University of New York for over 30 years. Eleanor has a PHD from Cornell University. Although she won prizes for painting and draftsmanship in high school and at the Educational Alliance in New York City, where she studied with Abby Ostrowsky, she chose to study the social sciences in college and graduate school, and eventually became an expert in health care policy and human resources.



While a professor at Hunter College, CUNY, New York City, she authored four books, directed a masters program in health services administration, and pioneered courses in critical thinking and writing. Gilpatrick picked up the thread of drawing and painting in 1998 in a plein-air workshop in Italy and returned to serious study at Hunter College, where Gabriele Evertz and Bob Swain became her mentors. Now, Professor Emerita at Hunter College, she is painting independently.



Top American artist, Gilpatrick has art for sale. Gilpatrick paints strong, romantic landscapes set in New York and places she has traveled to in the US and Europe. She is influenced by the 19th Century sensibility of Turner and The Hudson River School, but expresses a 21st Century "take" with vigorous brushwork and a strong color sense. Her figurative work looks at people in motion at a moment in time, absorbed in the activity of their daily lives. She expresses an affirmation of life with an occasional hint of the solitary.




Eleanor’s fine art paintings are also available for viewing at www.GilpatrickArt.com so visit if you get a chance. Please get in touch with the artist directly (click Contact Info, top right of this page) regarding the purchase of original paintings or licensing of an image. Enjoy the art!




ARTIST'S STATEMENT:



While I have weathered many of life's storms, coming back to my first love, painting, seems to have made me younger -- and without the angst of youth. Although I was a very political person, that does not come through directly in my paintings. However, after September 11, 2001, my paintings were filled with lots of sky and water, affirming the beauty still to be found in the world.




I believe that my work is telling about the awe and wonder the eye can see despite the chaos and corruption we confront. This is a kind of implicit spirituality, a difficult word in materialist times. I have striven to master modern issues of color and composition within a primarily realist context, but the paintings say "look at what I see." I hope that people take what they need from them."



I paint because...I am excited by the real world and because I am thrilled by the process. I love the feel of the brushstroke; I even like the washing up after a session. I use strong composition, color, and line. My people are intent on living their lives, and my few abstracts echo the landscapes. There is movement, intensity, energy, and an edge that is my unique "take."



I became enamored of acrylics when I discovered what I could do with color on color, with glazing, and with quick repair. I like to work with pots of color that are my basic palette, but I premix the particular hues, values, and saturations I want for the specific painting, also adding and changing as I paint.




After finding that plein air (outdoor) painting doesn't suit me, I developed a way of painting in which I use my camera as a sketchbook. I create the composition, sometimes combining elements from several photos. Once I decide on the proportions I translate that to the size and shape of the stretcher bars for the canvas, which I stretch myself.




I rely on color theory and my own instincts to tell me what to do. I may go back again and again while I am working on a piece until it captures my vision. I remain a representational painter regardless of market trends because I am infatuated with how things look to me. While my subjects cover a wide range of images, the paintings are unified by my eye, as beholder. I am pleased that my paintings are often described as beautiful, and people sometimes say "Wow."