Artist Detail

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Cindy Blain

Visual Artist

About the artist: What drives me into the studio is the urge to work with lots of expressive color and explore faces and figures and anything vaguely anthropomorphic.

People and faces have always fascinated me – the shape of an eye, the line of the nose, the way the mouth fits into the chin. Half-caught impressions of a profile or the way someone holds their head also provide inklings about who people are – about who we are.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with semi-abstraction as a sanctuary from the daily visual assault of electronic media. The level of visual detail hitting us every day (much of it blinking and flashing) is really outrageous. By contrast, I use a lot of color dominance to allow a place for the eye to pause, while contrasting color line work provides energy.

My latest series of figures has two subsets: Lost and Found Figures and Curving Figures. The Lost and Found series stems from my process of painting until I find faces and humanistic forms. The Curving series grew from painting teapots that segued into cuphandle and teapot knob "people." For some reason, I simply cannot get away from painting figures.

My art education includes study with artists in New Orleans and California, a B.A. in Art History from Rice University, and living in Paris -- looking at lots of art.