Maryann Lucas
lives and works in Sag Harbor. She is primarily self-taught but has also
received instruction and support from wonderful and generous members of the
East End artistic community. Working exclusively in oils, Lucas sets out almost
daily to create plein aire landscapes and seascapes. In her studio, she works
directly from life and captures the beauty of natural light as it transforms
ordinary objects into visual delights.
Lucas wants her work to celebrate all that is well with this world and brilliant
in this life, despite its pockets of darkness.
For me, she says, I know I am in the Presence of something
beautiful, when it steals my breath, silences my mind, pushes out everything
else and draws me in. I trust That.
I use That to guide my
hands as I arrange a still life or scan a landscape to determine where to set
down my easel. Ultimately, that is
what drives me to paint.
Becoming ever more skilled as an oil painter is another of Lucas goals. To that
end she remains teachable, finding it refreshing and vital for her own growth
to paint with others. She has studied with favorite artists including Michael
Klein, Dennis Perrin, Ben Fenske, Melissa Franklin, and Ramiro Sanchez, and the
late Jack Riggio, a prominent local artist from Southampton, NY. Lucas has
taken classes at the Victor D’Amico Art Institute in Amagansett, NY and The Art
Students League in New York, NY. She earned her B.A. from Georgetown University
and her masters from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.