Jo-Anne Finegan
There is something self-affirming about the process of ‘creating.’ To paint is to provide a structure for continuous learning, for facing challenges and surmounting obstacles, and for devising solutions. It is a vehicle in an ongoing search for mastery, invention, and imagination.
The natural world offers up an ever-changing show of light, colour, line, form, drama, mood, and atmosphere, simplifying the search for subject matter: Look, and you will find a potential painting.
To capture a sense of atmosphere and mood in the landscape I rely on direct observation, filtered to evoke a contemplative, calming, dramatic, ominous, or arresting mood. Tireless landscape observation allows impressions to be absorbed and integrated, and these inevitably will influence the work. As the American abstract painter Joan Mitchell said, “I carry my landscapes around with me.”
My intention is to arrive at a result that is abstracted and unresolved enough to be placeless. I often conclude that ‘less is more’ so the viewer can find their own place and mood within the work.
Jo-Anne Finegan relocated to the County from Toronto after retiring from her practice as a Child Psychologist. Prior to turning exclusively to painting with oils, Jo-Anne was a signature member of the Pastel Society of Canada.