Vail, CO
Raitman Art Galleries, July 19-August 18
Cynthia Duff, Golden Arena, acrylic on birch, 24 x 24.
This story was featured in the August 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
VISITORS TO CYNTHIA Duff’s solo show, taking place this month at Raitman Art Galleries in Vail, CO, can expect to see a plethora of Colorado vistas and wildlife portraits. While this new collection of work—about 20 paintings in total—isn’t out of the ordinary for a nature-loving artist whose home is perched on a mountain ridge in western Colorado, some viewers might be surprised to find that Duff portrays her subjects not on canvas but on birch wood. The artist even bends some of the pieces after she paints them. “When I bend a piece, it takes on a whole new dimension,” she says. “You walk around the painting, and the scene just changes.”
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- Cynthia Duff, Good Vibes, acrylic on birch, 31 x 41.
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- Cynthia Duff, Mountainside Bliss, acrylic on birch, 24 x 24.
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- Cynthia Duff, Ojo de Dios, acrylic on birch, 40 x 30.
Duff’s show, fittingly entitled Nature’s Pulse, opens on Friday, July 19, and includes mainly large-scale paintings with both flat and bent surfaces. Among these pieces are portrayals of Dillon Lake, the Gore Range, sunsets on the Colorado River, and aspen trees with the sun shining through them. There are also portraits of deer, horses, coyotes, and other animals she has observed and photographed throughout Colorado. Each painting captures a place or moment Duff has personally experienced. “I can tell you what mountain peak I’m painting and what location,” she says. “I just abstract it.”
Employing a technique she calls “fracturing,” Duff creates contrasting shapes with “very free, loose patterns” of color using strips of tape she temporarily applies to her surfaces as she works. The shifts in color that result—some subtle and others bold—resemble refracted light. “It feels like the atmosphere,” says Duff. “You can feel a breeze coming through, and it can feel like two different times of day in the same painting.”
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- Cynthia Duff, Repose Rhapsody, acrylic on birch, 40 x 30.
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- Cynthia Duff, Sol Liaison, acrylic on birch, 36 x 48.
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- Cynthia Duff, Vista Grace, acrylic on birch, 48 x 40.
The artist builds up layers of transparent acrylic paint on her surfaces until she nears the end of her process, when she switches to opaque paint. “That’s when I can go back in and add pops of color, and sometimes I’ll glaze over the opaque layers with transparent paint to get some of the luminosity back,” says the artist, who is careful not to cover up the character of the wood itself. “I love nature’s artistry in the wood grains,” says Duff. “There’s a texture and softness that I can’t come upon any other way.” —Kim Agricola
contact information
970.476.4883
www.raitmanart.com
This story was featured in the August 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art August 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
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