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 “For those of us who have lived a long time in the Maine landscape, it is as if Tom Curry were rendering the ache of the familiar and beloved,”
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Life on the Maine coast is charged with a brilliance, a wildness. The waters are a living green ecosystem, radiating wonder. There's an urgency to my work because so many of these places are being lost to development. Nature, ever changing, offers countless compositions. I want to evoke a place, time and atmosphere in my work. The natural world is my big studio, filled with opportunities to observe nature and explore its seamless miracle. Open air painting is a selection process: this sky, these waves, this foreground. It's not a fragment, but a series of experiences not limited to space and time like a photograph. Many places feel sacred to me, places where the landscape evokes a sense of stewardship and reverence. I have worked with pastel more than 20 years. The medium's fluidity and immediacy allow me to capture the ever changing light, water, and atmosphere. I often return to work in the same locations with infinite daily results. Many artists influence my work: Ferdinand Hodler, Wolf Kahn, Marsden Hartley, Tom Thompson and Rockwell Kent. I also find inspiration in Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot's paintings of the Italian countryside, as well in the work of Edgar Degas, Fairfield Porter, Edward Hopper and Rockwell Kent. |