“I was born to paint and respond with my brush to the visual world. I am captivated by imagery that is analogous to science and knowledge, while simultaneously denying both. My subject preference is snow, which we believe to be white and carry in our mind as such. When struck with light, the white of the snow is anything but. It glistens with blues, lavenders and greens asking, “What is truth?” It is the quest of the artist to answer.”
A signature member of New England Plein Air Painters, Barbara Lussier was elected to Hudson Valley Art Association and the Rockport Art Association. She is also an elected-by-jury member of the Academic Artists Association and the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has been chosen for the Springfield Art Museum Academic Art Association Invitational Exhibition for September 2010. She has served as Curator for The New England Landscape Invitational Show at the Lyme Art Association for several years as well as the Rockport Art Association membership jury. Her work is published in Great Day Trips to Connecticut’s Critical Habitats. Lussier has taught plein air painting privately and through various educational institutions, including the Lyme Art Association, where she is an elected member and served as President of the Board of Directors.
Lussier holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with high honors from the University of Hartford, Connecticut, where she studied with Rudolph Zallinger and Paul Zimmerman. She has also studied at Ringling School of Art, Hartford College for Women, and the Lyme Academy. Her work has been exhibited throughout New England and internationally. She is represented in a number of corporate and private collections and has won numerous awards, recently including the Painting Award from the Connecticut Academy of Fine Art, the Awards For Excellence in Painting from the Rockport Art Association and the Painting Award from the Academic Artist Association and the Sylvan Gallery Landscape. She received the Isabella W. Steinschneider award at the Hudson Valley Art Association 2009 Annual Show. Her painting, Chasing the Light, was awarded top 15% distinction by the Jury for the August and September 2009 Fine Art Views painting competition. Snow Light in Vermont was awarded first place at the Tolland Art Center Exhibition 2011. Morning Fog received second place at the Monson Art Association. Storm Passing won a best in show and Harbor Lights received a director’s award 2013.
Lussier is a philosophically direct descendant of the Old Lyme and the American Hudson River School painters, and approaches her subject in a way that embraces their traditions- honoring nature and working from direct observation. Her landscapes explore the romance of color and light and have been described as “poetry.” The daughter of a consummate fisherman and boater, Lussier experienced the mysteries and wonder of the sea while roaming the coastline of Nahant, Massachusetts as a child. She followed her father to the warmer waters of Florida, where he fished and boated and she attended the Ringling School of Art. Later, she explored the South Pacific coastline, where she was sometimes dropped by helicopter on uninhabited islands to paint pink rocks and turquoise waters. Currently, she lives in New England.
www.barbaralussiergallery.com
