Artists of Note | Gregory Packard

Color is the keynote

Gregory Packard, Joy, Love, oil, 36 x 36.

Gregory Packard, Joy, Love, oil, 36 x 36.

This story was featured in the August 2016 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2016 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

For Montrose, CO, artist Gregory Packard, color is to his paintings what the keynote is to a song. “I love expressing with color because it’s almost endless what you can say,” Packard explains. “Certainly value and composition structure that, but color can set the tone from across the room.”

The way that Packard employs his paint is often dictated by the subject matter, he says. An impressionist at heart, he adjusts his style as the subject matter commands, sometimes employing thick, short, highly textural strokes to create an effect similar to pointillism, sometimes laying down larger swaths of paint with palette knives.

Inspired by color, he’s naturally drawn to the golden aspen groves found in the nearby landscape. “I live in the epicenter of aspen groves,” he says. “I just love them and feel at home in them.” He’s also drawn to painting floral still lifes. “There’s nothing like the summer flowers. That’s what I garden. I have a lot of flowers growing around my house that I paint throughout the year,” he says.

Packard loves texture, and he builds it both in layers and by working wet into wet. “It goes back to the quality of the paint itself,” he says. “The thick, luscious paint, the heavy strokes, and texture. The quality of it itself is beautiful to me apart from what you do with it. You almost want to touch it. I like that kinetic aspect of it.” —Laura Rintala

Packard is represented by Ackerman’s Fine Art, Purchase, NY; Astoria Fine Art, Jackson, WY; Broadmoor Galleries, Colorado Springs, CO; Brinton Museum, Big Horn, WY; California Museum of Fine Art, Torrance, CA; Howard/Mandville Gallery, Kirkland, WA; Oh-Be-Joyful Gallery, Crested Butte and Telluride, CO; and Cimarron Song Gallery, Montrose, CO.

Featured in the August 2016 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2016 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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