Gina Hecht
Gina Hecht is a professional artist currently residing outside of Madison, Wisconsin. She paints in oils mixed with cold wax medium, which gives texture and luminosity to her paintings that reflect nature, with edges and focus softened to create an ethereal feeling.
The artist grew up in a small town in the Midwest, with opportunity to explore nature and her creativity. Her surroundings instilled a strong connection to nature and a deep appreciation for its raw strength and beauty. Her art exhibits the feeling of being connected to something bigger than ourselves.
The artist uses many layers and texture to create a story within her work. She places a high value on depth and form, light and shadow and achieves both with careful choice of color and focus, as well as the interplay of transparent and opaque paint, thick and thin layers.
While all of her paintings have an emphasis on depth and a feeling of being “in” the painting, the artist's focus explores different perspectives. Some landscapes place the viewer at the edge of a scene, meditatively looking out at the distant horizon. Others place the viewer directly in the middle of a scene, encouraging a walk along a path by a winding creek. And yet others, give a macro view of the landscape, perhaps lying down with the view covered by grasses and flowers. She uses each of these different perspectives to guide the emotive feeling of the painting.
Nature and a realistic scene may serve as my inspiration, however, the artist is not bound to the actual representation of the scene itself. Instead, a subject may inspire emotion and color palette more than realistic form and line. Her intention is to abstract the inspiration so that it invokes emotion and inspires imagination for the viewer rather than telling the story directly. By allowing the viewer to walk into the painting, she wants it to represent his or her own story of time and place and feeling.