Childhood pastimes of exploring woods and “fort building” inform Jean Cauthen’s latest vibrant paintings of trees and woods interiors. These creations convey a youthful sense of wonder, magic and transcendence.
Beneath a vivid palette of color, layers of complex shapes and dynamic compositions reveal themes of metamorphosis and movement. Viewers find themselves gazing through unexpected perspectives; looking upward through a canopy of trees or beyond a stand of birch.
This contradiction of chaos and order is, in part, inspired by her work as Artist-In-Residence at a regional hospital. This first-hand experience of the healing power of Art led to the creation of harmonious, elevating paintings out of intricate, seemingly impossible complexity. Consequently, many of her creations have been purchased for hospitals and public spaces that strive to provide an uplifting or stimulating environment.
One New York painter and art critic describes her work as “a perfect wedding of subject matter and handling…compelling and powerfully structured.” Others have found a “high level of evolution with pictorial thought” as well as “extremely rich in color and tactile properties.”
Cauthen won First Place in the National Juried Exhibition: “The American Still Life,” at the Bascom Museum in Highlands, NC. She regularly travels and exhibits in Italy where she paints landscapes.
Cauthen now resides in North Carolina with a dog named Blue and teaches Art at UNCC.
