Miriam Socoloff

Artist Statement

My work as an artist has always been informed by childhood obsessions. These include miniature worlds, familiar and loved landscapes and figures, and the forest in fairy tales and myths. My plein air paintings are made in the Michigan woods between the Galien River and the Dunes. As a child I was given the freedom to explore the dunes and woods of Michigan. I have returned year after year to that landscape as a source of inspiration. Painting directly in the landscape, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the gestural motion and wealth of detail that I find. As I step and look, a way of seeing emerges that is grounded in my own state of being as a part of and in relationship with the place I have chosen to paint. In this way each painting becomes a meditation on the shape of every leaf, the heat of day, the cool shade, the murmur of dune grass, and the grace with which the landscape lives and dies.