Victoria Mathiesen | Oils / Watercolors

Watercolors — My home is here in Vermont, but my birthplace is in Scotland where I return to ‘touch the old stones’ of that ancient highland landscape, sketching and drawing wherever I am, painting later some of the remembered structures, many of which are still inhabited. That legacy of inhabitation exists everywhere, we humans leave our marks . . . and I like to render some of them. Not only in Scotland, but in England too where the villages are of particular appeal, many of them bursting with the new life of incomers – keeping village schools and shops alive, the post offices too, even the old telephone boxes still work. Well, most of them! But old churches and the magnificent cathedrals have another tory to tell – hundreds of years of architectural development recorded in successive layers of styles from the smallest of those churches to the mightiest of the cathedrals – their doors are often the way in to that architectural history and one I like to record. Watercolor and ink lend themselves perfectly to the work.

Oils — To render landscapes requires being able to discard that which is superfluous to the composition, but vital to the journey the artist takes to retain the essential qualities of a unique place, its beauty and complexity revealed in light and in the colors of seasonal change and weather.

I work to give the viewer a sense of place remembered, in atmosphere as well as image, of the natural landscape which surrounds us. Different landscapes, whether new or familiar, each possess their own very specific qualities which trigger memory, recognition and reflection.