artistic visions

The following is text written by Peggy on the topic of her artistic vision and expression.

Weber credits her mother with taking the time to hike nature trails with her and her siblings at an early age, and turning her on to a life long love of the outdoors. A painter since given her first set of oil paints by her mother at age 12, Weber attended The School of the Museum of Fine Art in the mid 1970s. Also a clothing designer, she co-founded Clothware boutique for women in 1972 in Harvard Square and owned the business until moving to Texas in 1978. Weber has also been employed as a manager for Allied Department Stores, interior designer for an architectural firm, and as a free-lance Decorative artist. Currently, she is fulfilling her lifelong dream of painting the world around her full time. She participates in regional shows and competitions, and as she gains recognition, looks forward to gallery affiliation.

For the past few years I've lived part of the year along the North Shore of Massachusetts and the rest of the year among the forests of Sherborn, Massachusetts. I have spent a great deal of time hiking, observing, photographing and painting these worlds of small changes. A site must first engage me emotionally before I decide to photograph it. I then attempt to translate with paint and pencil, the often elusive and fleeting elements of light, shadow, and shape. I often travel back and forth to the sites I have chosen to paint, just to observe and sketch small studies. I consider my work finished when my painting evokes the revealed feeling of the place I have portrayed and "takes me there".

Lately, I've found myself focusing on and observing small plants, organisms, and the seasonal changes in them and the substrates they inhabit. I find myself increasingly intrigued with the many shapes and textures of lichen, a predominately green-gray-silver algae/fungus combination that lives on seemingly everything in the northeast forest. I have been working to create oil and graphite artworks of this fascinatingly beautiful symbiotic plant, thought by many botanists to be the oldest on earth. I have discovered areas of very heavy lichen growth, particularly near the town of Truro on Cape Cod. I especially enjoy observing and photographing lichen after a rainfall, when the color contrast of this ubiquitous plant on the rocks and trees it inhabits is at its peak.

Observing the little, ordinary, and seemingly mundane natural objects, shadows and light around me, and truly seeing the unique and ultimately beautiful aspects inherent in the algae, fungus, rocks, water and wood, has forever connected me to nature artistically as well as emotionally. For me, lichens growing in the wild are an often-overlooked source of beauty and inspiration, that can also be a challenge to do justice to. Capturing in paint and pencil these and other natural images and vistas with my creative vision is what I have chosen as my artistic focus.