August 2021: Greg Moschetti

I came to painting relatively late in life and find significant joy in the creative process and its outcomes. I feel that painting is a spiritual process and that the role of the artist is to elicit the same sense of spirit in the viewer as was felt by the artist in creating a work. This is not a new notion. George Inness and the tonalist painters of the late 19th century clearly painted in this context.

Few of my paintings are of places that exist in real life. Rather, they are created from atmospheric landscapes remembered or imagined. However, they often have a sense of familiarity about them and, when successful, draw the viewer into a spiritual feeling of peaceful solitude. Initially, these most often involved landscapes with nearby water with sky reflections and distant horizon views. Many are at day’s beginning or end and at change of seasons.

More recently, I’ve turned to simpler paintings of land masses at sea, some quite colorful and others using a primarily gray palette. For me these paintings still have the feel of solitude and spiritual portent although they are visually quite different. This series started in the studio, but was later inspired by trips to Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and Newfoundland where the stark contrasts of stone, water and sky captured my imagination.

I am primarily self-taught. I’ve studied with Dennis Sheehan, America’s foremost tonalist painter, and with Jason Alden at the River Gallery School and The Drawing Studio in Brattleboro. I’ve been most strongly influenced by the 19th century tonalist painters, especially Inness, Crane, Murphy, Twachtman and Wyant.

My work has been exhibited at various venues in the greater Brattleboro area including Vermont Artisans, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, Windham Wines, Cooley-Dickinson Hospital, and others. I’m a member of Brattleboro West Arts—a group of artists living and practicing in and around West Brattleboro.

I hope these paintings evoke the joy in you that I found in making them.