Aging, tryptich by Brenda Free, 67” x 28”

I never lost my love of finger painting. I rub, scrape and scratch into layers of acrylic paint on paper. This process allows a trace of what is underneath to become essential to what remains visible.

A decade of living aboard a boat is imbedded in my sensibility. There, my lifelong trait of finding images within organic shapes became an essential tool used to decipher my world. The ocean’s surface might disclose what had passed before, what the wind was like ahead or imply what lay beneath. At night, what looked like stars might be boats, and boats might be stars. An immensity of life was always present but rarely seen. This diffusion of the known world is the ride my paintings now take.

I was trained at the Corcoran School of Art and the University of Maine, Orono, where I received my degree. My career as a senior designer and finally co-owner of an advertising firm was the engine that allowed me to keep painting. My work has been shown primarily in Maine and Massachusetts. Unwilling to be far from the sea, I maintain a studio in Rockland, Maine, and on the Caribbean island of Bonaire.  In each place I seek to reveal what I sense as much as what I know.

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