I landed in upstate New York during my freshman year of High School, after living in New Jersey urban apartments most of my life.  We finally had our own first home, and my Mom loved her flower gardens and planted veggies in the sloped yard. New York to me was more green, hilly, expansive.  Lots of farms and apple orchards peppered the terrain.  My friend’s families were farmers, with acres of land to play in and explore as teenagers.  Cool grey NY winters had us sleighing down orchard hillsides, gliding past apple trees’ branches hidden in the cold snow, and in humid summers picking fresh crisp apples from trees whose branches were over-laden down with their weight.  Farmlands and the NY countryside were in my immediate line of sight as well as my distant view for many years, and I fully embraced my country experience.

The Hudson Valley was beautiful, as we lived above a bluff overlooking the valley and its famous and historical River. I would sit on our staircase looking out the window, squinting to see the river’s edges bending southeast towards Storm King Mountain, a hazy natural river view filled with atmosphere and ever-changing colors and weather and sunsets.  These views were magical to me.  The movement and sounds of the boats and barges on their river journey to and from New York City.  The apple orchards, and all the fun of running and playing in their openness.  A craggy old farm house of stone, hundreds of years old, a mill house on the side of a small cliff, still in use today.  Apple tree silhouettes growing upright like unified soldiers, receding into the distant hills, out of view.

Sometimes something sits deep inside you, waiting to be artistically explored, waiting to be discovered.  The misty atmospheric weather patterns, marshy river’s edges, surface textures of the bountiful countryside, holds so much magic and possibility for me to explore in my work. I want to paint it over and over with colors, gestures, nuances of perspective, to capture somehow a bit of that emotional connection through revisiting my experience of place, and finally to share that with others, using paint and process as my dialogue.

My quest as an artist lies in creating that sense of wonder and joy with color and gesture, an artistic, interpretive and yet subtly recognizable sense of place in an otherwise color-filled abstracted view.  I have been interested in pushing perspectives in this body of work, creating different compositions; sitting on a hillside looking down into the valley, looking up through the trees, looking out and down onto the river, all these and more are feelings and views of being there that I’m working into my paintings. Colors and gestures painted on my canvases and panels create some of the story I’m telling but leave something to be imagined and interpreted.  Something subtle for you to find, to discover, in my work, that excites you and makes you smile and feel the love for our landscape like I have.

Cheri Vilona

2021