Chasing
Waterfalls
A Chat with Mariella Bisson
By
Ross RicePet
Sometimes
we take this place for granted. The beauty that we are exposed
to on a daily basis, from the Gunks and the Catskills, to
the majesty of the Hudson at Garrison/West Point, to the rolling
hills and ridges of Northeastern Dutchess, inspire many a
local Sunday driver to remark “that looks just like
a painting.” But most of the time, we smile, blink,
and keep our eyes on the road.
Mariella
Bisson is one of those who pulls over and paints it. As a
longtime resident of the Hudson Valley, she has embraced the
influence of the Hudson River School and has developed her
own language and technique to express herself, utilizing an
inventive approach combining watercolor painting, drawing,
and collage. The results are remarkably powerful and modernist,
yet maintaining a strong connection to earth and sky.
We
are invited to visit her Kingston loft studio, on the top
floor of the Shirt Factory, to get to know Mariella Bisson
a little better.
Her
connection to the Hudson River School started at a very young
age, in her hometown of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where the
Fairbanks Brothers invented and manufactured the platform
scale, an important (and lucrative) development in the Industrial
Revolution. As a result, the town had a large Romanesque factory,
a museum of natural history, and a library, St. Johnsbury
Athanuem, with an art gallery fully stocked with Bierstadt,
Gifford, and Durand. Despite top grades and available scholarships,
she wanted nothing more than to draw and paint, and was encouraged
to do so by her father, John Aime Bisson who, though he made
his living mostly in the restaurant and ski lodge business,
was a dedicated painter and sculptor. She points out some
of his work: a trio of what she fondly calls “Post-Modernist
duck decoys.”
CONTINUE...
|
