Mariella Bisson

Mariella Bisson paints some of the same forests and waterfalls as depicted by 19th-century American art titans Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Sanford Gifford. She does so, however, utilizing a distinctly modern, fresh approach.  For her larger works, Bisson creates a base of collaged torn paper to serve as underpainting for her dramatic oils. This technique emboldens the geometry of her forms, highlighting the texture as well as the color and line of her natural scenes. The Hudson Valley resident prefers to work from drawings and paintings made in the field, rather than work from photographs.

"I move between abstraction and figuration making images of primal forces -- gravity, light, and darkness, endless geological time. Layers of paper replicate layers of rock under pressure. Small flickering fragments of paper communicate the effects of sunlight and moving shadows." — Mariella Bisson