Ariane Luckey Studio Tour
Though I’ve had the chance to visit with artist Ariane Luckey in person here in Maine and on the road in Massachusetts, I was finally able to make the trip to her home and studio in Connecticut’s beautiful Litchfield Hills region this fall. We enjoyed a fantastic afternoon together, bookended by a delicious lunch prepared by Ariane and then a short photo shoot that included special guest appearances by Ariane’s two studio assistants, Hadley & Dodger, her two Jack Russell Terriers.
Read on for more from Ariane including the history of her antique French easel, how she transitions from painting en plein air to inside in her studio space, and her current Artist’s Statement.
“Fun fact: I paint at an antique French easel that was my grandfather’s. He was a diplomat with the French Embassy and was posted every few years to far-flung countries around the world. An accomplished landscape painter, he painted en plein air. I feel a deep connection to him each time I stand in front of the (slightly creaky, slightly too small) easel.” - Ariane Luckey
“I usually begin with a plein air session out in the moment and return to the small corner studio space I have carved out in my home to distill, simplify. Surrounded by trees and wildlife, the space is up on a hill with walls of windows. Shifting light and little distinction between inside and outside. Bliss.” - Ariane Luckey
“A quiet contemplation of nature, looking for the light and emotion it evokes, deliberate obliteration, reduction, scraping away to reveal.
I react to the moment when light becomes color. Whenever I can, I try to start a work on location (en plein air) where I find a direct and spontaneous response to the moment.
I paint in oils and occasionally pastels. I seek to evoke the mood instilled in me by the trees on a hill or how the swaying grass of a summer meadow meets the cool shadows of the woods. Flecks of light in the forest capture me. I react to the emotional energy in the colors.
It is not about the specific place but more about the way the light at a particular time moved me. Simplification and reduction brings a quiet personal abstraction: shards of light and color, fleeting images seen out of the corner of one’s eye while passing by.
Both my French mother and grandfather are/were plein air painters and I have always painted. I have a visual memory etched into my mind from childhood from a book on Matisse of the cobalt blue lining of an open violin case in the deep interior shadows of a house in Nice. I am moved by the works of Edward Hopper, Diebenkorn, Wolf Kahn, Morandi, Bonnard, Vuillard, Cezanne, Wyeth, Fairfield Porter, Edwin Dickinson … to name a few.” - Ariane Luckey
A big thanks to Ariane for opening her home and studio to me for these photos! Be sure to follow along with Ariane’s latest work on her Instagram.
