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Cyndi Arnold
USA
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"My art is emotional, interesting, colorful, and imperfect. It is created from a place of joy and gratitude."
Cyndi Arnold paints abstract acrylics on canvas that hold the feeling of the day they were made. The paintings in this exhibition are gestural and expressive, built from layered color, pencil and charcoal marks, and shapes that carry the eye across the surface. Some of them are high energy, full of movement. Others are calm and open. Cyndi once worried that such different moods should not sit side by side in a single body of work. She has since accepted that the variation is the truest thing about it. Each canvas records what she was feeling when she stood in front of it, whether that feeling came from something she saw, something she heard, or something happening in her life at the time. Viewers are not asked to decode a subject. They are invited to feel first and to think about the feeling afterward.
Urban Vibe | Acrylic
$650
24" x 26"
I had so much fun painting this piece. I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like, so I decided to work with a minimum of three colors for more impact. I put on some jazz music and got started. I love these colors and wanted to see how they worked together.
Emotion is the engine of everything Cyndi makes. She does not begin a painting with a specific intention or a planned image. Her mood decides whether a piece will be loud or quiet, and she lets that happen rather than fighting it. The work is where her feelings go. Often it is only after a painting is finished, when she looks back at what was going on in her life while she made it, that she recognizes the emotion of that moment sitting plainly on the canvas. She describes herself as expressive when she paints and trusts her emotions to show her where a piece can go. For a long time she thought this made her work inconsistent. Now she understands it as the signature of who she is and how she creates.
All In Good Time | Acrylic
$900
36" x 36"
I wanted to paint a piece using neutral colors. I love texture, so I added a lot of it to create interest. I wanted contrast to create drama, so I decided to use dark shapes against the light background. I added the lines so the viewer's eye would travel throughout the piece.
"Now I just go with the flow. It is who I am and how I create, so I have accepted that."
Inside the studio, Cyndi rarely knows what she is about to make. She decides between canvas and watercolor paper, reaches for the colors that match her mood, and begins with a handful of pencil and charcoal marks. Fewer marks work better than many. She likes to start at least six different pieces this way, then selects her favorites to develop, and she usually has two or three paintings in progress at once. The method is intuitive by design. It takes away any dread of an empty surface and any worry about getting things wrong, and it gets her energy moving. Too much of one thing gets covered. When something she loves is missing, she adds more of it. The process was hard at first. Today she would not work in any other manner.
Other Worldly | Acrylic
$500
22" x 28"
I was in the mood for some drama, so I started with two colors. There was already texture on the surface, so I used that to create interesting shapes and lines for a moody feel.
Slow drying acrylic paint is her material of choice because it gives her more time with each piece. Cyndi applies the paint directly to the canvas and works it there. Most of her colors are mixed on the surface rather than on a palette, and she turns to a palette or a scrap of paper only when she is unsure how a combination will behave. After a layer dries she may return with a contrasting color to add impact, interest, or a little drama. Certain fundamentals guide her: contrast, composition, and a variety of shapes and sizes. She tries to remember to lead the viewer's eye where she wants it to go and to leave room for surprise. There is trial and error in all of this, and she welcomes it, since that is how she learns and she loves the challenge of trying again.
I created this piece using a minimum of marks and color. It was totally spontaneous, and I stopped when the heart showed itself.
Love Interrupted | Acrylic
$300
20" x 16"
"I want them to love the piece and love looking at it every day because they connect with it. They may not always know why they do, but that is the challenge, for me to get them to feel something and then to think about why they feel the connection."
"When I go into my studio to paint, I usually have no idea what I am going to make. I pick a canvas or a sheet of watercolor paper and choose the colors I am in the mood for that day. Then I start with a few marks in pencil and charcoal, as few as possible, and I repeat this on six or more surfaces before choosing the ones I like best. I typically have two or three going at the same time. Thinking about what I want to do is not part of it. I let it flow. That way a blank surface holds no fear, and neither does getting it wrong. If something is too much, I can cover it up. If there is not enough of something I really like, I can put more in. At first this was difficult for me. Now I cannot imagine working any other way."
Ad Lib | Acrylic
$350
19" x 16"
I was in a high-energy mood when I created this piece. It was made without any specific thought or intention, just my energetic mood.
Because she works this way, Cyndi always has paintings that are unfinished and simply resting. When she needs inspiration or a spark, she pulls them out and asks whether they are ready for another round. Music plays in the studio every time she works. It helps her reach her emotions and get started. Her ongoing challenge, as she puts it, is to stay open to every possibility of what a piece can become. Curiosity drives the experiments with color, texture, and shape that define her practice. She will wonder what happens if she tries one thing or does another, and then she finds out. That willingness to ask the question and follow the answer is what keeps the work alive and keeps her returning to it.
Joyfully Abstract | Acrylic
$575
30" x 24"
This was an experimental piece. I wanted to try moving paint around with different tools, such as trowels in different shapes and sizes. In my continuing search for drama, this was the result.
Drawing entered her life in elementary school in the 1960s. By her third year of high school she made a decision that says a great deal about her: she dropped the college prep track and took secretarial courses for her final two years, because that schedule left room for art classes. After graduation she was told that art was a nice hobby but that it was time to get a job. So she did. For many years she worked, drew in her spare time, and gradually let the drawing slide to the back burner. She believed her art had to be perfect to be any good, and that belief kept it small. She was good at the jobs she held, and she stayed in them, but they did not make her happy.
I challenged myself to create this piece. I started with a lot of colors and then decided to add texture to create more interest. It is a piece I worked on for several months while working on other pieces.
Random Detail | Acrylic
$975
40" x 30"
Everything shifted in 2007. Cyndi was in a serious car accident and missed almost three months of work. Unable to go anywhere or do much of anything, she had a great deal of time to think. When she returned to her job she felt edgy and restless, as if something in her life was missing. She decided to enroll in mixed media art classes at a local art center, and in her own words, that was it. She loved it immediately. She continued taking classes and workshops at the center, joined a local art alliance group, and studied in online workshops with artists who work in abstraction. What began as a way to fill a gap became the center of her life, and the years of drawing in spare moments finally had somewhere to go.
"A little drama and a little surprise, that is what I love in a painting."
Experimenting quickly became something she could not stop. The most important lesson from those classes was that mistakes do not exist and that a flawless painting does not exist either. For someone who had spent decades believing her work was only worthwhile if it was flawless, that idea was freeing. It gave her permission to create from her emotions instead of from a standard she could never meet. Cyndi loves abstract art precisely because it is not precise or technical. It is not organized. It is free and fun, and it makes her feel great. The paintings on view are the product of that freedom, made by a woman who waited a long time to give herself permission to paint the way she wanted and who has not looked back since.
Happy Dance | Acrylic
$200
6" x 12"
These marks reflect the energy and movement I was feeling while listening to music in my studio.
Last year an online course introduced her to a practice she now depends on. She keeps what she calls a playbook, a spiral bound book of twenty pages of 14 by 11 inch, 140 pound watercolor paper. She is on her second one. The pages are hers to keep, and she looks back through them to see how her work has evolved. The playbook lets her experiment freely with color and texture without the commitment of a large piece, so ideas can be tested before they reach a canvas. It is a low stakes space where the same curiosity that drives her paintings can run without consequence. It is also a record, page by page, of where her work has been and where it is heading, and she treats it as both a playground and a map.
This piece sat in my studio for a while. Then one day I pulled it out, had an idea to try something different, and it turned out to be an abstract flower.
Promise of a New Day | Acrylic
$200
11" x 15"
Above all, Cyndi wants her paintings to reach people. Her goal is for a viewer to feel something, to fall for a painting and want to see it each morning because of a connection they may not be able to name. That, for her, is the point: first the feeling, then the thinking about where the feeling comes from. She regards her art as a real thing in the world. It carries her energy and her emotions, it takes up space, and it is her way of sharing herself and connecting with others. She sums up the work in four words, each of them true: emotional, interesting, colorful, imperfect, all of it arriving from joy and gratitude. The paintings in this exhibition are an open invitation to stand in front of them, feel whatever arrives, and stay a while.
Fierce | Acrylic
$350
23" x 19"
I started this piece and got lost, not knowing where I was going or what I was doing. I was determined to make it interesting and full of energy and a bit of drama. I am fiercely proud of sticking with it to the end.
"There are no mistakes, and I do not have to create a perfect piece of art, because there is no such thing."
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