ARTIST STATEMENT

Years of outdoor landscape painting and figure drawing have given Joyce McCarten a rich painting vocabulary, which she uses to develop her abstract work. Through observation, interpretation, experimentation and pure imagination, she takes the familiar and alters it until it reflects her artistic vision. Rhythm and movement, structure and spatial and color relationships are the formal issues that engage and challenge her.

McCarten is an award-winning artist whose work is in private and public collections in the U.S., Europe and South Africa. She teaches a class on abstract drawing and painting and holds an annual workshop on “breaking new ground” for experienced artists. Many of her paintings are inspired by visits to places that speak to her own sensitivities. In 2001 she visited and painted in the bayou country of Louisiana, the “bush desert” of Niger (West Africa) and the wheat fields of central Montana. In 2002 she painted in the Tuscan region of Italy. In 2004 Joyce taught and painted in a school for orphans in Rwanda and on the beaches of South Africa.