Our resident artist, Theresa Ganzer-Blitgen, was featured in the Scenic Arts Loop newsletter. Here's her artist's statement...

As far back as memory serves me I’ve been able to draw realistically. I have a propensity for capturing minute details and it doesn’t trouble me in the least to take the time to do so. In fact, I find it meditative, sometimes challenging and always a bit mysterious. I discern the hues of color and see the way light and dark play on any given object, I capture it in my mind’s eye, and my hand translates it onto what ever surface I am working upon at the time.

For many years I was self taught. Using techniques I developed intuitively, my subject matter was mainly portraiture, done in pencil and often by commission. Eventually, I got a BFA degree from Rockford University and it was there that I found a variety of new mediums I enjoyed working with, learned new techniques in manipulating graphite, and discovered Art History. I was introduced to work that conveyed meaning beyond mere representation and that has been the driving force behind my art to this day, which remains hinged on Realism.

Graphite on paper is my first love and what I feel most comfortable working with. I appreciate it’s immediacy, simplicity and portability. That said, I have also engaged in the adventure of using a wide variety of mediums. I’ve expressed my art through oil painting, watercolors, charcoal, chalk and oil pastels, ceramic sculpture and assemblage.

Though my body of work is eclectic and subtly influenced by whatever medium it is created in, visual realism remains it’s constant. I’ve been told it represents art rooted in 19th Century Romanticism, which falls in line with my concern for nature and beauty, but my narratives are contemporary and relevant to today. Sometimes they are spiritual in essence, but just as frequently, my focus is on environmental issues.

I often create art that is deliberately ambiguous, but not so much so that the viewer cannot discern it’s deeper meaning or perhaps arrive at one of their own.

- TGBlitgen