“I learned by going where I have to go,” says Mary Page Evans quoting Theodore Roethke. “I’ve done this my whole life, and this place [VCCA] fits right into that.” Primarily a landscape painter, Mary Page works directly from nature--en plein air. She clearly revels in capturing those fleeting sensations of what it looks like and feels like to be outside in the natural world, but her work is also a paean to the act of painting. Mary Page paints with great brio imbuing her work with particular visual animation. This is evident in her line that vibrates with energy and the lushly painted passages of pure, animated gesture. She likes to study “the way nature draws. " Mary Page has been coming to VCCA each spring since 1991. She ‘s been coming long enough to notice that the boxwoods have grown so tall they’re beginning to obstruct the view. She used to love painting the mustard fields behind VCCA, but then “the daggone expressway came through and took them all out. When you...

A professional landscape designer and artist, Avy Claire’s paintings, drawings on Mylar, digital photography and installations are all centered on nature. Much of her work is conceptual, dealing with the built environment and man’s interaction with the natural landscape. While at VCCA, Avy decided to focus on just one thing, painting, and exploring ways to make the paintings more spare. “While here, I’ve been pushing myself to experiment a lot and play a lot and see what happens. I see something I like and I try to understand what is happening that appeals to me. A lot of the work is spontaneous and I’m trying to figure out how do I recreate spontaneity?” Avy turned her attention to the brushstroke creating simple yet quite power swirls of pigment in hues taken from the world outside her window. With these reductive meditations Avy was trying to figure out how much is enough. This was challenging, requiring not only acceptance of it by herself, but also the c...