Arden Boyce
Artist Statement:
Arden Boyce has been painting since she was a child, and ebullient creativity has sustained her through the birth and raising of her own four children.
Her love affair with light and color started when as a young art student. She traveled to Europe and was entranced by the original art that she saw there, especially the work of the Impressionists.
“Suddenly I saw everything differently,” she says. “It just took my breath away.”
For over twenty years, Boyce has been refining her international impressionistic style (she hails from the heartland of America, Arkansas, but travels and paints on both coasts, in Mexico and in Europe). In particular, she is developing techniques of “pure palette” painting using the vibrant hues of the spectrum: i.e., no dark earth tones. Because her colors are so vivid, she takes special care to control her images with subtly desaturated shades. The overall effect of her work is one of brightness and harmony, reflecting her own optimistic attitude toward life and desire to share her delight with the beauty in everyday life around us.
“I love to paint outdoors,” she says. “I draw with my paintbrush, or sometimes do quick watercolor sketches. It’s important to work very quickly, because the light and therefore the colors change as the sun moves through the sky.” She says that her goal in these drawings and sketches is to capture the authentic hues that she sees. She then enriches and enhances, to bring out the essence of the subject, “like the way you apply makeup, not to disguise the face, but to soften here, accentuate there, and draw the eye to special features.”
In addition to constant autodidactic study, Arden has formally studied with Barry Thomas in Arkansas, Idaho impressionist Ovanes Berberian, portrait painters Cedric and Joanette Egeli of Cape Cod, Carolyn Anderson of Wyoming, Xen Win Zhang of Beijing, as well as Colorado artist Mark Daily.
She has exhibited in various collective as well as one-woman shows. Her paintings grace many private as well as corporate collections, such as Bank of America, Alltell, the University of Arkansas Medical School Cancer Research Center, River Valley Bank, and Arkansas Tech University.