Artist: V. E. Long

Size: 44" x 30"

Media: Mixed Media on Paper

V. E. Long earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1983. She has studied with Paul Wonner, Llyn Foulkes, and Howard Warshaw and has been painting and drawing since she was twelve.

She is regarded as a second generation Bay Area figurative artist influenced by the works of Nathan Olivera, David Park, Paul Wonner, Richard Diebenkorn, and Manual Neri. Her obvious love for the strong gestural marks of Abstract Expressionism is reminiscent of Willem de Kooning.

Beyond these influences, V.E. Long has found a way of portraying the figure that is unique to her own vision. Each work begins with a very classically drawn figure in charcoal, with swipes and smears creating gestural marks emanating off of the human form. This is done directly from the model, once the model is gone she begins to deconstruct the classical drawing with paint, pastels, or graphite pushing and pulling the parts toward abstraction. The work becomes less about any one specific individual and more about what it is to be human.

The artist's goal is to be a visual representation to human frailties, strengths and emotions, to describe gravity pulling at the form, and the invisible, yet constant evolution that time's passing demands. V.E. Long depicting the human figure is an exqusite challenge..."how do you give face to joy, longing, laughter, or regret?" The strong, quick, aggressive marks capture movement, change and ironies. Occasionally, peering out from beneath all of the layers of deconstrucction and reconstruction the figure has gone through, all the mingling of paint, pastel and graphite, there remains a charcoal eye or face glancing out. That small fragment is the "essence of being human" looking back at the viewer.

V.E. Long lives on a former chicken ranch in the Napa Valley, California. The granary houses her studio and a huge etching press, where she creates paintings, monotypes and assemblages.