Maryann Lucas, CA

Maryann Lucas lives and works in Sag Harbor, New York. She is primarily self-taught but has studied with contemporary artists she admires, like Michael Klein, Dennis Perrin, Ben Fenske, Ramiro and Melissa Franklin Sanchez. Working exclusively in oils, Lucas sets out almost daily to create plein aire landscapes and seascapes. In her studio, she works directly from life and captures the beauty of natural light as it transforms ordinary objects into visual delights.

Lucas describes her work as expressive realism. She wants it to celebrate all that is well with this world, despite its pockets of darkness. “For me,” she says, “I know I am in the presence of something beautiful, when it steals my breath, silences my mind, and draws me in. I trust that feeling. I use it to guide my hands as I arrange a still life or scan a landscape to determine where to set down my easel. Ultimately, that sensation is what drives me to paint and to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. I try to celebrate what is simple yet sacred on the surface of life with the goal of soothing what aches the human heart."

Lucas is a graduate of Georgetown University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Before suspending her career to raise her two children, Lucas worked as a television reporter for WCAX in Burlington, Vermont. Prior to that, Lucas worked in New York City for CBS News as a producer for many shows including, Face the Nation with Leslie Stahl, Universe with Walter Cronkite and Nightwatch with Charlie Rose.

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