Greta Van Campen

Native Flowers, Vinalhaven

2019

Triangle with 18 inch sides Greta Van Campen is known for her geometric hard-edged graphic approach to representation. She has traveled across the United States sourcing inspiration from the landscapes, small towns, and cities. Now, with a young family, she gets most of her inspiration close to home. Scenic ocean views and paintings of flowers from her gardens make up the bulk of her new work. She paints in her home studio, beginning each piece with a photograph she has taken. She uses the photo as a reference while drawing from memories of her experiences, sometimes also working from sketches done on location. The image is translated into a painting by first setting large compositional elements and then finding shapes and masking off areas with tape, mixing the desired color of paint, and continuing to tape and paint until the desired amount of detail is reached. This distilled and stylized approach imbues her traditional subject matter with a freshness and modernity. As Van Campen explains, she “figure(s) out how to recreate a version of the natural, atmospheric place by turning it into a more geometric, color and balance-driven scene that is hopefully appealing, interesting, and authentic.” Van Campen was born in and resides in Maine. She received her BFA from Bowdoin College, ME. She is represented by Octavia Art Gallery, LA & TX, and Dowling Walsh Gallery...

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My painting is an inquiry. I make images as a way of responding to experiences that are important to me. Experiences that help me to understand why I’m in this world often happens when I am outside in large open spaces. Painted images act as a tool. I respond to the spaces my art suggests. That response is usually non-verbal. I am interested in the experience of non-duality that “getting lost” in big spaces can sometimes produce for me. The paintings have gone through a range of artistic treatments with the recent years seeing a focus on space, light, textures, atmosphere and distance. My landscape paintings are made from memory, not from on-site drawings or photographs. I use memory as a filtering agent to remove non-essential visual elements. When a work is successful, it must have a sense of poetry. There is nothing “new...