Nancy
Cicchetti

The Painting Process

Nancy Cicchetti has been a painter and printmaker for more than thirty years. Her practice moves between life drawing, oil painting and printmaking, and she is drawn again and again to two subjects: nature and the human form. Every painting starts with a photograph she has taken herself. Some come from her travels, to Rome, Sicily, Paris, Barcelona and Sevilla; some from her daughter; others from simple experiences and moods closer to home, a beach at Limantour, a truck, a white shirt. These images are not something to copy. They are starting points of discovery. In the studio the photograph begins to change. Dimensions shift, colors are altered, shadows are deepened, and edges are softened or sharpened until a new composition arises from those elements. What guides her through that process is a single feeling, the sensation that made her want to paint the scene in the first place. She has learned to respect that feeling and to let it lead. For Nancy, a doorway in Sicily or a tree in Golden Gate Park can carry as much emotion as a portrait. Movement matters most. She wants the eye to travel over the canvas, catching the light and the pulsing of shapes, whether in her dancers caught mid-step, a summer afternoon on the water, or a crowd on opening night. Her portfolios follow those threads: Urban, Summertime, Dancers and Reflections. She describes each painting as a story to investigate. Her job is to begin the story, and then to let the viewer take it to the next step. Her studio is open by appointment.