Brigitte McReynolds

Brigitte McReynolds Description

Brigitte McReynolds was born in Rosenheim, Germany and studied in Munich and Italy. She moved to California in 1989 and immersed herself in painting and printmaking. She lives in Sonoma with her husband and daughter and returns to Germany and Italy every year to continue her work in painting and monotype.

McReynolds brings a fresh approach to figuration with her bright palette and fluid, sensual drawing line. Working from abstraction, creating broad, layered areas of color, McReynolds finds her figures in the process of painting. They begin to develop personalities of their own. Her figures are decidedly feminine and their powers transform the space. McReynolds is a disciplined painter who loves her materials. She has honed her instincts over many years of exploration and arrived at a place where she is confident in taking risks and letting the works resolve themselves.
 

Brigitte McReynolds Statement

Isn’t it interesting that the water to land ratio on the earths surface and the water to mass ratio in a human body is about the same? I discovered that after I had spent another month in Venice, Italy as an artist in residence.

All of us artists there talked about the ’sea legs’ we developed after a couple of weeks of being on the island. I thought for sure it must have had something to do with being surrounded by water all the time. If we are about 65% water, perhaps the moon and sun and stars are not only making ebb and flow at sea, but sea legs for the rest of us.

My more scientific artist friends at the studio in Venice attributed it to the fact that we are not only riding the waterbus to and from the studio, but also navigating walkways, bridges, alleys, stairs and walls without a single straight line or right angle.

When I came back from Italy, looking at countless photographs of water ripples taken on my frequent Vaporetto rides, I began my research: Water to Mass. Water to Bone. Water to Land. My minds eye busy imagining and my body already feeling it.

I wanted to create a body of work that would reflect on what we are made of. I wanted to play with the fluidity of water and the solidity of land and bone. I wanted to create abstract paintings that could be interpreted as landscapes, but also picture what it feels like living inside a body. Looking at it this way, these new abstract paintings are as much self-portraits or human-portraits as well as land and seascapes.

Usually I know what my new paintings will feel like before I even paint any pictures in my mind. In this case I knew what I wanted my work to focus on, but had little idea of how to get there. 

Since stripes have been part of my artistic vocabulary, I started by imagining what it would look like if ‘my stripes’ would fall into the water.  Or what pattern would appear if any of my paintings would dance on the waters surface.

Picture paint floating on water and then imagine it being absorbed by a canvas.