About Contemporary Artist

Cynthia McLoughlin

Landscape & Abstract Artist

Artist Bio

Cynthia McLoughlin is a contemporary American painter. Her modern, stylized work is characterized by the reflective qualities of the metal panels on which she paints. Living life elevated at 6700' in Park City, Utah, the wide open sky, mountains and outdoor lifestyle are reflected in much of her landscape painting. Her abstract works emerge with introspection, connection to memories and emotions.

"I came across a glorious Welsh word, "Hiraeth", pronounced hee-raee). This word translates quite literally into English as "longing", yet according to Wikipedia, its true meaning has a great deal more nuance to it than simple longing. I have been calling this feeling in my heart homesickness but really it is much more than that. It is a longing for what was once in this world, yet now it is no longer, through the passage of time or even deeper , perhaps of something we once had, but at this time do not and never will. Yet the longing remains. The older I get, the stronger the emotional tug at my heart. There is a reason that most people live within an hour or two's drive from where they were raised. This feeling is captured for me in many of my paintings, the solitude that comes from being alone with all that emotion."

McLoughlin grew up in a small town in bucolic upstate New York. Art classes at her high school were limited. Wanting to pursue an artistic career and build her portfolio, she attended the Foundation Program at the Muncin, Williams, Proctor School of Art at S.U.N.Y., graduating with an AAS in Fine Art. Realizing that it would be difficult to support herself as a fine artist, she shifted her creative energy into learning a more lucrative career. McLoughlin moved to New York City and studied fashion design/illustration at the prestigious, Parsons School of Design, rounding out her BFA with academic classes offered at the New School for Social Research. After graduating she worked as a fashion designer in New York City for the next decade.

Living, working in NYC and traveling to cities around the world for business was as exhilarating as it was exhausting. After meeting her future husband, the couple decided to move to Washington D.C. to begin their married adventure. There McLoughlin tackled the production side of the fashion business, developing and producing private label men’s and women’s wear for the mid-Atlantic clothier Britches of Georgetown.

A family ensued and became the focus of the artist's creative endeavors. Following opportunity, she relocated her family from Washington D.C. to New York followed by California and finally, Connecticut. There she embraced the artistic community at the Silvermine Arts Center taking classes in print making, ceramics, abstract and landscape oil painting. When the kids left home, she and her husband moved back to New York City, then to California and now split time between Park City, Utah and New York City.

Ms. McLoughlin has exhibited her paintings in numerous international art shows including Art Basel Switzerland, Art Basel Miami, the Swiss Art Expo in Zurich, The Monaco Yacht Show in Monte Carlo as well as many national shows. In 2018, she was inducted into The National Association of Women Artists, based in New York City. In 2020 she joined the board of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, (UMOCA), in Salt Lake City, and serves on the Development and Ambassador Circle Committees.

Artist Statement

Cultures across the span of history have gravitated to the mountains for peace and clarity. We feel the dangerous excitement of a raging storm, it thrills and terrifies all in its path. Creating paintings using mountains and storms as subject matter allows me to express my thoughts, emotions, and love of nature. I delight in the effects of light, the opposing darkness, and color, always looking for new ways to let the light show through in my work. Light relays the metaphor of hope and love.

Taking inspirational photos while skiing, hiking, and living among these beautiful mountains and beneath the big western sky, I am attracted to and bear witness to the sublime. Ultimately, my ideas come from a place where memory, reality, and imagination intertwine.

Using these source photos and memories, I begin with a few quick compositional sketches, then move to the metal panel and paint. Brayers have been the applicator of choice recently because I can get a lot of paint on the panel quickly, blending and building the thin veils of color as I go. I like painting from my home studio so I can take frequent breaks. When returning to the studio with fresh eyes, I often will see a flicker of something that I can build on. I like to work wet-on-wet in a continual process, adding and subtracting as I go. I feel the rhythms of the landscape and often use squeegees to follow the undulations of the land as well as the imagined air currents in my skies. This either exposes the reflective metal surface or adds the invisible dimension I perceive with paint.

Deconstruction. By scraping, I expose the reflective silver, making a shimmering river or reflections on a lake. Buffing, I create the illusion of movement to the backlit edge of a cloud. In my more abstract work, I find spatial rhythms and move the viewer through the two-dimensional plane by pushing the paint into overlapping folds made with my tools. I use different solvents to melt the paint off the metal and varnish to make pebble-like textures on snow and moonlit skies.

“When Byron writes of his wish to mingle his soul with the mountains, the ocean and the stars, he echoes over a century’s worth of thought about the relationship between human beings and the grand or terrifying aspects of nature.” Professor Philip Shaw

I want to awaken this primary need and connect with the viewer through the language of art.

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