STATEMENT BY ARTIST VIRGINIA ZUELSDORF

Having been an artist as long as I can remember, I love to paint and create and I couldn't live without color surrounding me.

Painting huge is my passion -- that's me in the photo above with a mural I did at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure.

My work tends to fall into series of paintings and sometimes I have several series in progress at the same time. I may work on 5 or 10 or 20 or more paintings at once.

You could call me a colorist impressionistic painter, but you could also see my work as being abstract, abstract expressionist, surrealist, realistic or outsider, to name a few genres present in my art These days I'm leaning more to the abstract, both German expressionist and Abstract expressionist .

A commonality in my work is definitely the use of strong diagonals. I don't consciously do it, it just works out that way.

I often use emotions and personal or universal issues for inspiration. I also like to inject some humor (some dark humor lately) into my figurative paintings. I love trees and forests and the great open skies of the southwestern states.

Having an extensive background as a photographer (old-school, black and white), I often use my photographic images as references for my paintings.

Influences include Japanese prints, Monet, Degas, Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keefe and the Expressionist artists, especially the Fauves. I'm also influenced by photographers such as Man Ray and Ansel Adams and love Kandinsy and Chagall for their joyful, almost childlike, canvases.