“Last Light- Forgotten Coast”
Oil on linen
30 x 40 in.
A reconnected inspiration: While painting a 6×8” Plein Air last year, two John Henry Twachtman paintings done while he was studying in France 130 years ago, displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, personally viewed for the first time 35 years ago while Karen Ann was studying at Parsons School of Design in New York, reconnected their inspiration. The story behind Twachtman’s naturalistic sketch adapted a year later as a monumental canvas “Arquas-la-Bataille” illuminated– and applying its exercise from a plein air field study to a 30×40” studio work is the underlying passion behind this piece Last Light- Forgotten Coast. It began and ended as a purposeful and classical application of intense study, inspiration, and light being applied to canvas in a manner to simply reflect a fleeting moment, embracing its call to action that Karen Ann as an Artist could not ignore.
Artist Statement: My paintings capture influential daily moments, and the lasting effects these memories play on our hearts and minds throughout our lives. As an artist the passion is to reflect light, life, land, expressions as genuinely experienced “At That Moment…”. I paint in the hope to transport the viewer while also exposing them to the very emotion that stops us both now in our tracks to experience a view; simply, seeking with my art to bring you into viewing your own, “At That Moment…”, too.
Bringing us to today and how Karen Ann, feeling God’s call to let out into deeper waters with the only means before her; by HITTing the road, where the journey IS the destination. On April 5th, 2013 she set out on a journey, that in spirit continues today. Her 1st Red Dot on a 5-month, 21,000+ mile solo jaunt was PACE13, now; it is her 5th attendance and 2nd time doing so as Faculty. ‘“I am still learning”-Michelangelo at 87, and Karen Ann ‘I cannot wait to see what I learn this year! Even this once single mom, with an empty nest, who began a mission to grow as an artist to meet the next season in life; as a classically trained painter I took hand me down pearls out into the field so to speak. Lessons that a Naturalist Sketch, a Field Study, are all terms for open air through the ages, and now simply en Plein Air, and that is exactly where I learned to see- Godspeed.”
Karen Ann is heading out again to the Plein Air Convention & Expo 2017, because she loves how it brings Artists together today in a History-making way! Karen Thanks God and Thanks PleinAir magazine that she may even be a part!
This painting is available through the artists working Art Studio in the Historic District on the island of Venice, Florida.
Karen Ann Hitt–An Original Hitt–Fine Art & Atelier
230 Ponce de Leon Avenue
Venice, FL 34285
For more on the story behind this painting visit:
941.586.0207
Each piece is a combination of experience and memories, its part of the artist’s identity.