Mazama 1, 24 x 24 inches
Mazama 2, 24 x 24 inches
Brenda Cirioni
BRENDA CIRIONI
Stow, MASSACHUSETTS, USA
The inspiration for Mazama Series came after a visit to Crater Lake in Oregon. The seismic eruption and consequent collapse of Mt. Mazama, 7,700 years ago created one of the deepest lakes in the world. The immensity of the devastation from that volcanic eruption spawned awe inspiring beauty. Crater Lake is fed only by rain and snow melt — meaning there are no added sediment or mineral deposits — making it one of the cleanest and clearest lakes on earth. The resulting color is a rich deep blue making it worthy of its nickname “lake majesty”.
Having experienced a house fire in my childhood, the loss of all things home I felt a connection to this place that I had not expected. The possibility of transformation has inspired my work for many years and this extraordinary event moved me to paint.
Mazama Series are paintings whose complexity is obliterated by explosions of color that consumes all that it touches. Layers, textures, marks and color are key to my process. I instinctively layer my mixed media paintings by scribbling, drawing and painting, I scrape and sand revealing what’s been obscured, continuing the process until resolution. The resultant works are fraught with emotional expressions of the inner workings of my mind and spirit.
Brenda Cirioni’s mixed media paintings use landscape as the entry point for an exploration of her relationship to the natural world. Her secluded upbringing at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by woods, swamp and meadow inspires her work. She seeks to mitigate the tension between communion of nature’s elements and their solitude, between destruction and renewal, and between energy and ephemerality. Cirioni critically combines her painting with palette scrapings, fabric, and other pieces of waste to imbue them with new life. Cirioni received her education from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, MA, through both the Diploma Program and Fifth-Year Certificate.
Her work was recently part of a traveling Brigham Young University exhibition Beyond Structure: Representations of the American Barn. She’s exhibited in Attleboro Arts Museum, Danforth Museum, deCordova Museum, Fitchburg Museum and the Berkshire Museum. She is represented by Three Stones Gallery, Concord, MA, Renjeau Gallery, Natick, MA, Portland Art Gallery, Portland, ME.
Her paintings are in numerous corporate and private collections, including the Wrigley’s family collection. Cirioni’s painting Dickinson’s Hope hung in the office of Governor Deval Patrick and now resides in his collection. She works in her studio Skylight Fine Art in the historic Gleasondale Mill, Stow, MA. She resides in Stow, MA, with her husband. There she enjoys gardening and walking the many woodland trails around her home.
“Fierce and energetic mark making.” - Amanda Kidd-Kestler