Christen Yates renders the emotional experience of the landscape through the use of layered oil paints creating compositions that border representation and abstraction. Incorporating pigments that are non-toxic and occasionally locally foraged lends a congruence to honoring the land she celebrates. Raised on the North Shore of Boston, Yates attended the University of Virginia and later completed graduate studies in theology, art & sustainable development in Vancouver, BC. Since moving back to Virginia in 2014, she has exhibited locally and in various venues from Cape Ann, MA to the San Francisco Bay area. She's held artist residencies on Vancouver Island and in the highlands of Texas. Her work has been acquired by the University of Virginia and is held in numerous private collections. Yates works out of her home studio on a small farm at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains.
About
"My paintings seek not simply to observe, but to explore our relationship with the land as well as its flora and fauna, to connect my vulnerability and fragility with the created world’s. They emerge from a deep love for and care of the land. Focusing especially on the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia and the coast of Cape Ann, Massachusetts, I use loose and suggestive strokes that imply an immediacy of experience within which I want the viewer to linger. Painting for me is a process of paying attention, of looking at the layers of meaning we ascribe to our placed-ness and hopefully evoking moments of re-humanizing connections."
"Yates’s gentle, contemplative work shows an inner peace and affinity for the timelessness of the landscape. Yates captures her surrounding mountains and fields, and occasionally animals, with economy and assurance. Anyone who needs to be reminded that we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world can find it in these paintings." - Karen Blair, Virginia Living Magazine, Dec. 2024