Artist Bio:
“I am but the brush…”
The earliest “art memory” of Capell is from the age of four, when she would paper the walls of the local hen house with her paintings, “so that the chickens would look at something pretty!” She has never stopped making art, throughout an idyllic rural childhood in Florida to her fine art study at Florida State and art history classes in Florence, Italy. Her experiences in Italy and her sense of awe in seeing such master works were catalysts that inspired a lifelong journey of combining travel and painting
Capell’s early work was in an illustrative, realist style. She attended the Illustrator’s Workshop in New York, and has seen her work reproduced in posters and books, including the cover art for a novel by Isaac Asimov. Moving to northern California in 1980, Capell’s paintings were influenced by the plein air work of the early 20th century California painters, pioneering with their liberal and bold brushwork and vivid sense of color. And always in the background was her interest in the work of Gauguin, to whom she attributes her early love of painting sensuous island people and South Pacific scenes.
Her desire for a fresh and spontaneous approach led her to learn to paint on location in Brazil, with its lush tropical gardens and panoramic beaches, and later to a small island off the coast of Panama, where she and her daughter lived for five years. “It was a magical step back into time… an artist’s dream of a place ,” where she describes a 400 year old fishing village with no cars, brightly colored fishing boats and flowers everywhere.
In 1999 Capell and her daughter moved to the Big Island of Hawaii, where here paintings took yet another leap, this time in a contemporary direction as she explored woodblock printing and working in mixed media on more abstract themes. Still, she never abandoned her love of landscapes and painting figures, and today is as moved to paint the island’s lovely hula dancers as the wind swept waves while she strives to capture motion through brushwork and color, with always a subtle emphasis on negative space. If you look closely through the rustling palms you just might glimpse her silhoutte as she spends yet another morning at her easel painting by the sea.
