“The Most Wonderful Time” 48 x 48 in. (sold)
" ...I took this photograph last year, beginning of December. My husband and I decided to go for a hike on the Ditch trail in Snowmass. I remember thinking to myself “do not forget this, do not forget this!” . What I mean by that is that no matter what adjustments I do on my@phone to balance the light and contrast, the pictures I take never do justice to what I am really looking at in the moment. So I am standing there with my fingers frozen and my toes numbed, printing in my memory every detail of that moment. My work doesn’t start in my studio, it starts in the moments I live outside in nature. When I am painting in the canvas referencing to the photograph I have chosen, I have started painting that photograph the moment I took it. When I look at something that amazes me, my head goes to my brush. I study every detail of that moment imagining that I’m creating it with my hands. It’s a complex thing. I can’t ever just look at something beautiful without thinking in my mind how to use my brush so you can be in that moment as well, so you can be amazed just as I was. I don’t spend much as much time working on every little detail on the composition itself, as much time as I spend on creating the effects to suggest to you what I have felt. Is just what I know to do. Hopefully I can take you there with my art. It’s the message i want to transmit the hardest thing to do. Maybe that’s the struggle all of us artists have"
by ISABELLA GARAFFA