Most of my work is landscape or related to nature. Occasionally I select other subject matter, explore it, and return to nature again. I experience a place, see a person or object, and express it through drawing or painting.

Descending from several generations of artists, I had to find my own way to make art, to have it be unique to me.  My practice incorporates realism with sense memory: I try to express the essence of being in a place, to visually share the experience of the temperature, scents, and sounds of an environment. 

My materials include graphite, charcoal, pastel, and ink for drawing, and oil paint and sometimes acrylic for painting.  I work on paper, wood, canvas, linen, masonite. I sketch, use the camera, phone, printer, tape, scissors, pencils.  I formulate and ruminate, sketch some more, paint on top of it.  Sometimes I paint on top of older paintings, months or years later, incorporating or obliterating what lies beneath.  

I make art because it is the most direct expression of my thoughts and emotions.  When I am deep into a piece the sensation I experience is closest to meditation; it is intense, consuming, and results in unparalleled clarity.

Everything begins inside; in the head and the heart, the distillation of what the eyes see becomes either descriptive words or expressive marks.  I choose marks, most of the time.

Cushla Naegele
New York 
2024