Darthea Cross Studio

In my paintings, I constantly seek to portray the quiet, often unexpected, moments of insightful reflection we all experience from time to time — intimate moments of personal confrontation triggered by a response or reaction to our environment.

While such moments are deeply personal, and most often happen when we are alone, the resulting insights also reflect enduring, universal human themes. In such moments we come to understand our moral, ethical, emotional, and psychological struggles.

Sometimes a reflective moment is fleeting, yielding a sudden insight, and sometimes it unfolds slowly over a long period of meditative solitude. But it almost always takes place in stillness.

Each of my paintings is an exploration of the stillness of such a moment, both within and without.

For the chair series, the chair serves as a metaphor for the commonality of our emotional experiences. The chair is one of the most familiar, universally recognizable objects in daily life. Chairs help define the spaces we live in. The protocol of our society is reflected in the way we handle them. They serve as indicators of social standing.

But we also relate to chairs in very personal ways. Over time, through continuous wear and tear, chairs come to reflect the personalities of the people who use them. They carry the residue of long-term family relationships. They offer clues as to the quality of the lives we lead. Because of this, my interest in chairs as the subjects of my paintings tends toward antiques and very well worn chairs. I try to present the chair in all the richness of its history of use.

We work in chairs. We think in them, eat in them, talk in them, laugh and cry in them, and enjoy a variety of distractions in them. But perhaps most importantly, chairs also define places of quiet reflection and realization, where we make our confrontations with self, and where we experience insight and the resulting peace of mind. In addition to serving as the focus for so many of the activities of daily living, chairs serve as vehicles of reflection, restfulness, and meditation.

Another vehicle for reflection, and meditation, for me, are the interiors of old houses. By eliminating the various objects in a room, the "stuff", the clutter we fill our minds and our places of habitat with, I focus on the quiet, seemingly empty place.

By paring down the elements of my paintings to combinations of chair, human figure, walls and floor, and light and color, I try to depict scenes that are simplified but not sterilized. In each painting I strive to issue an invitation to viewers top participate in the solitude of the scene while finding their own meaning — a meaning that will inevitably reflect the intersection of the deeply personal and the profoundly universal aspects of human experience in their own lives.

Selected Group Exhibitions

"Visions of Light" Powers Gallery, Acton, MA 2008

"Emerald" Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA 2007

"Here and Abroad" Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA 2006

"New Works" Powers Gallery, Acton, MA 2006

"Summer" Copley Society of Art Boston, MA 2006

"Through the Window" Art 3 Gallery, Manchester, NH 2004

"Seeing Red" Art 3 Gallery, Manchester, NH 2004

"New Members" Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA 2003

Copley Society of Art, Boston, MA 2003

"A Conversation Among Three Artists" Artspace Gallery, Maynard, MA 2002

Concord Art Association, Concord, MA 2001

Concord Art Association, Concord, MA 2000

Concord Art Association, Concord, MA 1999

"Assabet River Artists" Earthwatch, Inc, Watertown, MA 1998

First Expressions Gallery, Boston, MA 1997

Selectmen's Gallery, Brewster, MA 1995

Solo Exhibitions

"Draw Up A Chair" Indian Hill Music Center, Littleton, MA 2005

"A Chair Well Known" The Christopher C. Brodigan Gallery, Groton, MA 2004

Selected Collections

Fidelity Investments

Wellington Management Group

Publications

The Middlesex Beat art magazine, cover article, June, 2002

Awards

Gamblin Paint, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 1998

Education

School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA 1986-87, 1994-98

Boston University, Boston, MA 1983 B.S. Business Administration-Finance