Meredith Milstead

Artist Statement: Meredith Milstead 

Meredith Milstead resides in Tucson, Arizona. She works as an art conservation specialist and teaches drawing.

Artist Statement: Gloria Giffords

On two separate occasions last year I have had the opportunity to spend time absorbing the landscape at the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert. At every look out, always in the back of my mind was the question: "How would I capture the uniqueness of this place with its emptiness, shifting colors, and clear air that causes everything to be in such sharp focus?" As a practicing art conservator, one's background often includes extensive academic and studio work (art history and painting, sculpture, etc.) and this preparation for a career in conservation can be also developed as a separate part of an individual's expression. Hence, the publication of a number of my articles and manuscripts concerning the topics of Mexican religious art, popular art and culture as well as my continued class and studio work in drawing and painting.

Photo by T. Scott Williams/NPS

Giffords talks art at Northland Pioneer College, Holbrook Campus

It is hoped that the two weeks spent here in September will result in not only my acquiring increased skills in the manipulation of paint and color to a satisfactory degree but also arriving at some solutions that conveys to others the impressions and feelings this landscape evokes.

Using rather traditional paradigms: the physical - the uniqueness of the site's colors and light portrayed , with a chemically/mineral limited palette.in every instant possible; and the ephemeral - the intellectual environment of isolation, stimulation, and focus....I propose to develop a series of studies at at least two different sites catching the result of light - direct and reflective - during three distinct times of day - morning, noon, and afternoon. Watercolor and oil studies will be done on site and then taken back to the studio/workroom and their information expanded into larger, finished works.

Photo by T. Scott Williams/NPS

Milstead discusses art at Northland Pioneer College, Holbrook Campus

Recently, new products made from a wider than usual, naturally occurring mineral colors have been developed and these will be exploited in both oil and watercolor studies, particularly in the sections of rocks and soil as well as in the larger, more developed works.

My goal, then, is to attempt to capture the uniqueness of the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest during different times of the day in a series of watercolors, oils and mixed media in studies and finished works using mostly earth and mineral-based pigments.