Bio: Justine started using acrylic paints to experiment on wood and canvas at the age of 10. Her first formal training was several years of night school at the locally famous Silvermine School of Art in New Canaan, CT where she grew up. Painting in acrylic on canvas, she has won multiple awards from entering local shows in San Diego, her present hometown. Justine paints in acrylic using a variety of techniques. Starting with a series of photographs, she makes composite preliminary sketches using the best of each photo. Once the final drawing has been executed to scale, she uses a graphite transfer paper attached to the canvas. The drawing is placed over the canvas/graphite paper and transferred by going over the original drawing, thus transferring the meticulous drawing onto the canvas.
Usually a wash in warm colors is applied first. Blocks of color go on next, starting from dark to light, bacK to front. Wet on wet, blending, dry brush, scumbling and washes are the techniques most often used. In 1992, she was accepted into the San Diego Museum of Art, Artist’s Guild. A studio painter all her life, in Autumn of 2023 she took a semester at UCSD in Plein Air Painting. A veil was lifted, freeing her from the desire to capture meticulous detail, it reversed the obsession and instead she aspired to capture a scene, a mood, a shadow in a few short hours. A new appreciation and love for this outdoor art form awakened in her.
Statement: “For a period of time, I was trying for a more “painterly” look; loose brush strokes, crazy colors; a look that was less “uptight”, yet I was still obsessed with detail. However, with the discovery of the Plein Air style of quickly discerning and applying shapes and value, I have discovered a happy middle ground can be achieved in the studio or in the field. My goal is to guide the viewer’s eyes through the painting in such a way that all of the canvas has been viewed. Not every detail is given importance. Some is obscured on purpose so that the viewer will not linger there. I often use a serious perspective to guide the eye; a street, a path, or even the way the clouds hang in the sky. I am not one to make protest statements through my art. My painting philosophy is to paint pleasant scenes. Why? Because happiness is what I wish for most. If one is happy – to me, nothing else matters. I wish the viewer to find peace and relaxation in my art. I want them to WANT to be in that painting…to look at it and feel it is possible to imagine themselves there, even if it is for just a brief moment; Perhaps to light up a memory that they have experienced in their past.”
