No shortage of color in this exhibition
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“You can’t be afraid of color if you’re around me too long,” said Nancy Berninger, whose bright landscapes now dominate the lobby gallery at the Fitton Center for Creative Arts.
Berninger turned to painting about 11 years ago, she said, after having raised her children and decided to turn her dabbling into a career. Studying under area teachers like Sandy Maudlin and Steve Perucca, she tried her hand at watercolors and oils before settling on acrylics as her medium of choice.
“I left watercolors because I like the physicality of acrylics, the interaction with the canvas,” she said. “I put the canvas up in my barn and I can go wild. Painting give me the freedom to explore and no one can tell me what to do. I’m free.”
She said she also likes to crank up the heavy metal music when she works, her favorites being AC/DC and the indie rock band National.
“It gives me courage,” she said, “lets me out of the box.”
She likes to work fast, she said, and with “generous amounts of paint,” sometimes beginning with a photograph she’s taken or a small pastel sketch she drew, or sometimes just out of her imagination.
“I don’t really have a fixed approach,” she said. “My work is spontaneous and I don’t fiddle with it too much.
“There are a lot of painters out there, but very few artists,” she said. “An artist has an identity of their own they can express, the don’t need to copy anyone else.”
