Eleanor Gilpatrick. USA

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

ABOUT MY ARTWORK
I came back to painting at a time when some people think about ending their productive lives. I have created my life several times, and this has been the best so far. Drawing and painting have permitted me to open my inner life and my connections to the world and to the people and places I love. I affirm life and celebrate beauty, but in 2007 my muse asked me to show the contrasts in the world: the modern sublime, where beauty and terror combine. My work continues to tell about the awe and wonder the eye can see, but it now looks further a field to enter the ranks of artists who speak out about the world.

I am engaged with modern issues of color and composition within a contemporary realist context; the paintings say "look at what I see." And despite commercial pressures I still refuse to allow or make reproductions of my art. They are original works in every sense of the word, and my collectors can rely on that.

I paint because ...I am infatuated by the look of the real world and because I am thrilled by the process. I love the feel of the brushstroke; I even like the washing up after a session. I use strong composition, color, and line. There is movement, intensity, energy, and an edge that reflects my strengths and my unique "take" on the world.

I became enamored of acrylics when I discovered what I could do with color on color, with glazing, and with quick repair. I like to work with a basic palette, but I premix the particular hues, values, and saturations I want for a specific painting, adding and changing as I paint.

After finding that plain air (outdoor) painting doesn't suit me, I developed a way of painting in which I use my camera as a sketchbook. I create the composition, sometimes combining elements from several photos. Once I decide on the proportions I translate that to the size and shape of the stretcher bars for the canvas. Recently, news photographs have become models for some of the elements of the paintings.

I rely on color theory and my own instincts to tell me what to do. I go back again and again while I am working on a piece until it captures my vision. I remain a representational painter because the beauty of reality, no matter good or bad, still holds my attention. While my subjects cover a wide range of images, the paintings are unified by my eye, as beholder. I am pleased that some of my paintings are described as beautiful, and that people sometimes say "Wow."

BIOGRAPHY

Eleanor Gilpatrick is a contemporary realist. She paints landscapes, figural works, and still lifes that capture fragments of the world that arrest the viewer in terms of composition, color, and content. Working in acrylic on canvas, a modern colorist, she expresses an affirmation of life with a hint of the solitary.

In 2007 she embarked on a new undertaking, to express her thoughts about the state of the world. Her "In The World" series was the first result and more have been appearing. She offers the experience of connection through the visual images she paints. A contrast to the anti-war paintings are her ongoing nebula paintings. These new series have been inspired by international press photographers and NASA, whom she credits.

Prior to her art career, Eleanor Gilpatrick was professor at the School of Health Sciences, Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY). She won prizes for painting and draftsmanship in high school and at the Educational Alliance in New York City, but chose to study the social sciences in college and graduate school. She eventually became an expert in health care policy and human resources, authored four books, directed a masters program in health services administration, and pioneered courses in critical thinking and writing.

She picked up the thread of drawing and painting in 1998 in plain-air workshops in Italy and returned to serious study at Hunter College, where Gabriele Evertz and Bob Swain became her mentors. She has been painting successfully ever since.

Gilpatrick's work includes strong, romantic landscapes set in New York and places she has traveled to in the US and Europe. She is influenced by the 19th Century sensibility of Turner and The Hudson River School, but expresses a 21st Century strength with vigorous brushwork, strong composition, and powerful or surprising content. The work with the figure looks at people in motion at a moment in time, absorbed in the activity of their daily lives, wherever that may be.

Gilpatrick has had solo shows in Manhattan; Eastview/Tarrytown, NY; Milford, CT; and the Bulgarian Consulate, Manhattan.

She has been in juried shows including the Galleria D'Arte Mentana, Florence, Italy; the Marymount Manhattan College Gallery, Manhattan; the Cork Gallery, Lincoln Center Manhattan; the Pen and Brush Gallery, Manhattan; the Stage Gallery, Merrick, NY; the First Hudson River Art at Rhinebeck show, NY; the Westport Cultural Center, CT; The Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts, NY; the Bowery Gallery, Manhattan; Gallery International, Baltimore, MD, where she was awarded 3rd place in the 2-D category; the Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT; Gallery West, Alexandria, VA; Art Harvest at WEAVE, Sacramento, CA; the Riverview Gallery, Havre de Grace, MD; the Mills Pond House Gallery, St. James, NY; the Woodstock School of Art Gallery, NY; online with the American Juried Art Salon (2005, 2006, and 2007) and Her Story, Manhattan Arts International; The Riverfront Studios, Schuylerville, NY; the Touchtone Gallery, Washington, DC.; Studio Montclair, George Segal Gallery, Montclair, NJ; Fieldstone Fine Arts, Ramsey, NJ; The Organization Of Independent Artists' 5th Annual Juried Exhibition, Manhattan; The Easton Arts Council, Art In The House, Easton, CT; The Lana Santorelli Gallery, NYC.; The Hudson Guild Gallery in NYC, The Stamford Art Association (Faraway Places), Stamford, CT; The Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY (Summer on Long Island); the Hun Gallery in Manhattan; The "In The News" and the "Art Into Life/Life Into Art," and "Body Image" shows at The Pen and Brush Gallery, Manhattan; the Dayton International Peace Museum, Dayton OH, and the One Of A Kind Show, NYC.

Gilpatrick curated a student art show at Hunter College from 2000 to 2008, and then took the competition online through 2012.

Gilpatrick was selected to show at the Riverview Gallery, Havre de Grace, MD. and Gallery 307 in Manhattan. Her painting, The Shell Monument, was the August selection for the 2007 Emerging Artists Calendar.