Softening

SofteningBri Custer is a plein air painter investigating perception, memory, and color through the New England Landscape. She received her M. Ed. in Secondary Education (2019) and B. A. in Studio Art with a minor in Psychology(2014) from the University of New Hampshire. Her work has been featured by Clover + Bee, Candyfloss, and on the Create! Magazine blog and can be found at Nahcotta in Portsmouth, NH and Sorelle Gallery in Westport, CT. She is currently a

Bri Custer is a plein air painter investigating perception, memory, and color through the New England Landscape. She received her M.Ed. in Secondary Education (2019) and B.A. in Studio Art with a minor in Psychology(2014) from the University of New Hampshire. Her work has been featured by Clover + Bee, Candyfloss, and on the Create! Magazine blog and can be found at Nahcotta in Portsmouth, NH and Sorelle Gallery in Westport, CT. She is currently a full-time artist based in Concord, New Hampshire with her husband Bryan, baby Helen, and their hound-lab mix, Vinny.

Artist Statement:
Show title: Adaptations
I’ve long considered the synonymous relationship between perception and short-term memory in my painting practice, but more recently I’ve been curious about the way episodic, or long-term memory, informs how I choose the landscapes I paint. When I set out, I look for a place that feels familiar and if I manage to find it, a tenderness drives the process. I find that places can hold a kind of charge–an emotional history–like when you return to a place you’ve frequented and as you explore, past experiences in that place unfold from memory. The painting becomes a reaction to both the visual and emotional space of moments past and present.
This collection of paintings was created during my transition to motherhood and they required me to find new ways to communicate and explore the landscapes I love within the walls of my studio space. My plein air season ended early last year as I navigated the limitations of a difficult pregnancy. My adventures to paint the marshes at Plum Island got shorter and less frequent, and eventually I finished the season exclusively in the studio. I returned to photos of landscapes I painted earlier in the summer when I was at full capacity. Exploring these familiar scenes in the studio gave me the opportunity to slow down and do more manipulating than observing. I compressed value ranges to explore tonal palettes. I cropped and stretched my photos to compose with deep foregrounds and high horizon lines. The studio offers more control than working outside, where I am required to navigate the elements and time pressure, and that sense of control was a comfort in a moment of significant personal change. Like all paintings, these have become personal artifacts of this season in my life.