Sailing Lesson, Speedboat Collage

Margery Gosnell-Qua received an MFA in Painting and an MS in Art History from Pratt Institute in 1996, where she traveled to Italy to study Painting in Tuscany and Art History in Venice. Under the guidance of Mary Buckley, Pratt professor of Color, Light, and Design, Ms. Gosnell-Qua was challenged to paint "visual equivalents" to her senses setting her free to paint beyond the confines of outward appearance. Ms. Gosnell-Qua studied Paul Klee's pedagogical note books, which became the basis for her approach to abstraction. The artist paints in oils and watercolors in a style that ranges from painterly representation to abstraction. Her process begins by sketching and painting small studies from life, an information gathering stage in which the artist records compositions and colored light. In her successive studio works the artist pares down her subjects to painterly forms. The artist explains: "I work from memory and studies as the actual place I am painting may distract me from my internal impression. I alter proportions, adjust colors until I find something akin to my experience; an equivalent to the fragrance of a place, the feeling of the air, the sound of the birds, a child's voice. I will complete small oils on paper before I paint a composition on a large canvas. Each study is an individual work in its own right as the image continually changes. It is a process of uncovering what I'm thinking. I may find playfulness, stillness, motion."