Violetta Chandler

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 “Her painting style integrates 19th Century Russian Realism and Impressionism with 19th Century French Realism and Impressionism fused together with a modernist palate of strong vivid colors.  Her painting techniques are technically varied, some paintings combine thin glazes along with thick impasto applications.  In regard to appropriating Russian realist styles in her landscape work two important late 19thCentury artists come to mind: Ilya Repin and Ivan Yendogurov. Repin’s paintings are highly emotional and epic.  Yendogurov are spiritual and calm.  It should be noted that Repin’s classical earth-toned chiaroscuro has also influenced her portraits.  Because of her academic training in drawing, her portraits have intense precision in the eyes, arms, and hands.  While painting portraits the artist likes to talk with her sitter bringing out nuances of character in their posture.

The primary influence on her in regard to color is Claude Monet and in French Realism, Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet. Her color palette is in the Impressionist canon, but the application of thick pigment (impasto) is closer to French Romantic Realism.  These elements are combined with subtle light strokes that give her ideas an unassuming feel for the passage time.   Instead of graying down color in shadows, as in the academic tradition, she applies Monet’s idea of complimentary color in the shadow of a lit object’s principle hue.

For Chandler “painting is a dialogue rather than a monologue” with the sympathetic observer. In reference to this, “my paintings can seem unfinished, because I want the emotional connection to the work by the viewer to be completed in their imagination”.

Her sensitivity to all the elements of art is demonstrated in the fact that her personal family photographs as well as her photo studies for paintings have all the clarity and balance to be expected of a well-trained eye.

One can easily enter the illusions of her paintings with the suspension of assumptions of arts historical purpose and the singularity of a certain style.  Entering her illusions of space and mood can be effortless, because besides from her professional training her work has insight about our place in the world and the pleasure of seeing light on vivid color.” – Written by: Kevin Costello