Cynthia%20McLoughinWorks

Artist Bio

Cynthia McLoughlin is a contemporary American painter. Her stylized work is characterized by the reflective qualities of the metal panels on which she paints. McLoughlin grew up in a small town in rural upstate New York. Art classes at her high school were limited. Wanting to pursue an artistic career, she attended the Foundation Program at the Muncin, Williams, Proctor School of Art at S.U.N.Y. After graduating with an AAS in Fine Art, she shifted her focus to fashion design and headed to New York City. With her now-famous classmates, Marc Jacobs and Tracy Reese, among others, at Parsons School of Design & The New School for Social Research, McLoughlin studied fashion design & illustration. Experimenting with color, fabrics, texture, and design, she absorbed many variations of techniques and styles from these talented creatives. After graduating with a BFA, she worked as a designer for the next eight years.

McLoughlin raised her family, moving from New York to California and back east to Connecticut. Forever the outdoor girl, she currently resides in Park City, Utah. She followed her passion for painting full time in 2008. She has since exhibited her paintings in numerous international art shows including Art Basel Switzerland, Art Basel Miami, the Swiss Art Expo in Zurich, The Monaco Yacht Show in Monte Carlo as well as many national shows. In 2018, she was inducted into The National Association of Women Artists, based in New York City. She recently joined the board of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, where she serves on the Development & Gala committees.

Artist Statement

Cultures across the span of history have gravitated to the mountains for peace and clarity. We feel the dangerous excitement of a raging storm, it thrills and terrifies all in its path. Creating paintings using mountains and storms as subject matter allows me to express my thoughts, emotions, and love of nature. I delight in the effects of light, the opposing darkness, and color, always looking for new ways to let the light show through in my work. Light relays the metaphor of hope and love.

Taking inspirational photos while skiing, hiking, and living among these beautiful mountains and beneath the big western sky, I am attracted to and bear witness to the sublime. Ultimately, my ideas come from a place where memory, reality, and imagination intertwine.

Using these source photos and memories, I begin with a few quick compositional sketches, then move to the metal panel and paint. Brayers have been the applicator of choice recently because I can get a lot of paint on the panel quickly, blending and building the thin veils of color as I go. I like painting from my home studio so I can take frequent breaks. When returning to the studio with fresh eyes, I often will see a flicker of something that I can build on. I like to work wet-on-wet in a continual process, adding and subtracting as I go. I feel the rhythms of the landscape and often use squeegees to follow the undulations of the land as well as the imagined air currents in my skies. This either exposes the reflective metal surface or adds the invisible dimension I perceive with paint.

Deconstruction. By scraping, I expose the reflective silver, making a shimmering river or reflections on a lake. Buffing, I create the illusion of movement to the backlit edge of a cloud. In my more abstract work, I find spatial rhythms and move the viewer through the two-dimensional plane by pushing the paint into overlapping folds made with my tools. I use different solvents to melt the paint off the metal and varnish to make pebble-like textures on snow and moonlit skies.

“When Byron writes of his wish to mingle his soul with the mountains, the ocean and the stars, he echoes over a century’s worth of thought about the relationship between human beings and the grand or terrifying aspects of nature.” Professor Philip Shaw

I want to awaken this primary need and connect with the viewer through the language of art.

Shows in 2021

Artexpo 2021 | New York, NY 

November 18th-21st, 2021 with Art UpClose

CASA of Los Angeles |  Los Angeles, California

Court Appointed Special Advocates

Charitable Art Donation for Auction, Shine On

November 5th, 2021

The Monaco Yacht Show | Monte Carlo, Monaco

September 22nd - 25th with Art UpClose

Summit Gallery | Featured Artist and Collector’s Party

August 27th, 2021

Swiss Art Expo 3.0 | Zurich, Switzerland

August 25th - 29th, 2021

Artbox.Project Barcelona 1.0 | Barcelona, Spain

May 2nd - 7th, 2021

National Ability Center | Park City, Utah

Charitable Art Donation for Auction, Skating on Thin Ice

March 4th - 6th, 2021

Artrbox.Project World 1.0 | Zurich, Switzerland

January 4th - June 30th, 2021