Maggie Shepherd

I love using light and line to create landscapes and still life paintings.

The forgiving and dramatic oil medium allows me to experiment and hunt for connections on the canvas, allowing the work to evolve in an abstract expressionist way. I seek to express a personal interpretation of the subject, always trying to make a better painting. I often work in "painterly" style, loosely and spontaneously, especially when working pleine aire.

Bonnard, Morandi, Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash are some of the artists that inspire me to find freshness and beauty in the everyday: a bowl, a piece of fruit, a fold of cloth, a group of shrubs are the kind of things I enjoy painting. I love the outdoors and find the Ontario landscape a wonderfully fulfilling and challenging source of creative inspiration.

I spend a lot of time in nature. I collect information on site and work on small sketches, when satisfied I start painting with a big brush, the shapes and patterns emerge. The fun and discipline, is choosing what to enhance and what to loose, it is this "process"stage of painting that I love so much, when all possibilities and options are vying for consideration.

I have been to Italy multiple times on painting trips, I very much enjoy painting the landscape and architecture there, and the very interesting set of challenges unique to the light and landscape of Italy.