Artist Statement
About the Artist
Enchanted by the wisdom and order inherent in even the most chaotic of landscapes, I love the natural world’s beauty and its kaleidoscope of colors, knowing I can only hope to weakly emulate the astonishments of creation. Can the artist hint at their mysteries, evoke some feeling of resonance, perhaps akin to what one feels at the welling up of a concerto, the hint of a summer breeze, the glint of sunlight on flower petals, the industry of bees? Patterns abound, from Fibonacci to fractals and lighting that takes us somewhere beyond the painting, to ideal worlds, to places where the heart alternately leaps and rests.
Andrea Brunais is a lifelong author, poet and photographer – and now a pastelist. By trade a journalist who also worked in higher ed communications, including at Virginia Tech, she has dedicated herself to the medium of soft pastels because their pure pigments create delightful explosions of fresh and saturated color. She earned her B.A. degree in mass communications from the University of South Florida. Her painting “Afternoon Prayer” was juried into the More Leaves of the Tree Exhibition at Radford University in 2020, and “Clouds of Serenity” won an honorable mention in a contest sponsored by Monet Café, an internet group with 10,000 artist-members. A resident of the Mountain State since 2006, Brunais lives in Bluefield and spends as much time as possible meditating on West Virginia’s rivers, waterfalls, mountains, bluffs and wild skies.
