Carol Pelletier

This work is about my exploration into the ephemeral qualities of twilight while incorporating the subtle qualities of tonalism. Tonalism strives to create mood through atmosphere by using a variety of mid tones within the color of the painting. My practice involves a daily ritual of visiting and revisiting environments that are open and hold reflective light on Cape Ann and coastal Maine. This practice helps to imbed emotional space within a place I love. These places hold memories and emotions within the light and structure of the land, every time I visit. My primary medium is oil paint mixed with cold wax. I also make my own cold wax medium, by bleaching the beeswax given to me by a local beekeeper and suspending it refined linseed oil. Cold wax medium holds a beautiful light within it and when mixed with oil paint it provides a luminosity that brings life to the surface and to the color. The image moves and breathes within that light and with this medium I strive to resolve the discord between the frenzied and meditative elements of time. There's no real way to control momentum in our lives (although we try), but we have all been witnesses to how time moves in varying speeds.

We live in a world in which we have perceived the fleeting comings and goings of the days, weeks, months and years. We also have had moments that are frozen, and our recall of those moments help to magically recycle our relationship to time and space. Sometimes it feels like déjà vu, sometimes it feels like loneliness. Twilight happens to be one of my favorite times of day; it's a time of reflection and transition. It is where the light greets the darkness, with a short pause. Color becomes intensified, and the structure of the sky and ground are in flux, creating visual and emotional depth. Twilight holds in it a feeling of two worlds - a beginning and an end.

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