Jean Cauthen

 My artistic influences spring from nature, poetry, childhood wrapped in an especially broad swath of Art History.

All my life, I have lived in places where storytelling is a kind of currency.   From New Orleans to Virginia storytelling colored even the simplest of interactions. As a student and later, university art professor, I l absorbed the history, the artists, the forms as an ongoing narrative.  Subsequently, the stories were re-counted in a fresh way from a contemporary and personal perspective.  There is power in stories and how they connect, inspire and teach us. This fascination of “retelling” an artwork informs my paintings as I re-imagine artworks and ‘collaborate’ with past painters.

Color always drives these naratives..  Through the language of painting, I strive to convey the dueling natures of care and recklessness, control and chaos, the personal and the universal.

 My hope is to connect the past with the present and create a dialog between the two.  When considering the expressions of now and then, I think of Van Gogh who said, “Life is probably round.”

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