Lightening Painting

M.A. Langenkamp is an American East Coast artist born at the start of World War II. She grew up in Washington D.C. and is a world traveler. Drawing was a first instinct. At age 12, the artist won a youth art competition sponsored by the National Symphony Orchestra by painting an image of the Personnage with Long Ears for Saint-Saens "Carnival of Animals". «  My painting was projected onto a screen on the stage of Constitution Hall in Washington as the orchestra played. This was my first exhibition.  By the late 1950s I began taking art classes at the Corcoran School of Art and was inspired by the wave of Abstraction swooping down from New York City from 1950 to 1980. I went to New York frequently and saw the work of de Kooning, Jackson Pollack and Larry Rivers whom I later met in 1985. In 1960 the artist sailed to France on the ship « La Flandre »which became the first of many visits to Paris and later led to residence in Provence near Avignon. In 1962 Langenkamp graduated from the School of International Affairs at George Washington University and subsequently worked at the Smithsonian Institution, Division of Civil History as archivist to celebrated historian, Wilcomb E. Washburne. Langenkamp received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from George Washington University in 1985 and soon after joined the faculty there as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Art. Langenkamp’s Masters Degree Thesis of 1985 was accessioned into the catalogue of the Library of Congress and can be downloaded under its title, “8 1/2 + 8 1/2 = 17, Origins of Imagery” by Mary Alice Myers Langenkamp. « My images, both abstract and realistic, are taken from sites along the Potomac River, from Paris streets, from vistas in New Mexico and from the piedmont of Mont Ventoux in Provence. I've had classical training and sometimes do figural works. Overall, I aim to create a fugal interplay of line, form, color and interstitial space. I often combine bravura brush strokes with lines and space. I also studied Japanese Sumi ink painting with celebrated woodblock printer Unich-e Hiratsuka during his stay in Washington DC in 1962. I studied ink painting with Arthur Hall Smith and oil painting with William Woodward. As a traveler, I’ve visited 23 countries Including archeological monuments: the temples of Angkor, Cambodia, the temples of Kyoto, Japan, and the Mayan pyramids of Mexico.