Paint by Lorelei
STATEMENT:
My work is inspired by my experiences, the landscapes, structures, and the people around me. Entwined in the natural world are human creations. I enjoy combining these elements to tell a story in visual art of the human experience in the natural landscape. Representation is employed as a beginning framework, but the inspiration becomes a memory once the foundational paint is poured. I allow the paint to guide my decision-making and work with value and contrast, and intuition to finish the process. I love playing with color and use it to set a tone or mood for my landscapes. I am most inspired by the places I have traveled. I start my process with acrylic underpainting using a photograph or a Plein-air sketch as the source. I switch to oil only after laying down a foundational composition. I like oil for its historical tradition linking me to painters of the past. I think viewers are most interested in the storytelling element in my work and in connecting my experience and vision with their own and my free expressive mark-making. Humans have a specific and universal story. I feel a piece is successful when I can bring the past with the present and connect a particular place with a universal feeling.
BIOGRAPHY:
Lorelei Sowa is an artist who makes paintings. Her work in mixed media of acrylic, oil, wax, and gold leaf contains recognizable shapes and landscapes with a representational reference to allow the viewer a point to get their bearings. However, color and design dominate her surface to enable the viewer a place to engage and add personal meaning. Mark making and raw materials are allowed to creep into controlled brush and pallet work. Merging art objects with sustainable and reusable products led Lorelei to explore weaving select paintings into wearable scarves. As a former quilt maker, the combination of fashion and textile with design has always been of interest.
Lorelei's work can be viewed in Madison, Connecticut, at Junk-2-Junque or by appointment in her private studios located in Bonita Springs, FL, and Guilford, Connecticut. She is a member of the Guilford Art League; Guilford CT, Shoreline Alliance; Madison, CT and The Center for the Arts; Bonita Springs, FL. She studied art formally at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC-BFA 1992). She continued her learning through Ox-Bow School of Arts and Residency, Saugatuck, MI, and the Creative Visionary Path (CVP) with Nicholas Wilton. She has also attended Lyme Academy of Art workshops in Lyme, Connecticut.
After serving several years as a docent at the Wadsworth Atheneum museum of art in Hartford, Connecticut, she was finally inspired to return to her creative training roots and developed her own practice. While living in New York City during the Pandemic, she was inspired to share her work by forming a company, Paint by Lorelei, LLC, where she can share that process with you. Lorelei was born in Heidelberg, Germany, but spent most of her childhood outside Flint, Michigan. She now resides in Bonita Springs, Flordia, and summers on the shore in Guilford, Connecticut.