Kit DeweyThe Fine Arts Department presented “On The Road to San Gimignano II” paintings by Leslie Ehrin at Cabrini College Sunday, Oct. 6 in the Joseph and Grace Gorevin Fine Arts Gallery in the Holy Spirit Library.
Ehrin received her bachelor of arts degree at the history of art from the University of Pennsylvania and continued her education at The Pennsylvania Academy of Art. She learned still life and landscape painting skills, creating the illusion of physical space from old master painters such as Rembrandt, to the more contemporary work of Cezanne, Van Gogh and the Impressionists. Images of cranberry bogs in Nantucket, gardens in Bermuda, vineyard hillsides in Tuscany and South Africa are depicted in her acrylic paintings.
After a breakup with her boyfriend, Ehrin decided to take a trip to Florence and the central Tuscany region of Italy, where she experienced the light and color reflected in miles of rolling hillsides all on a rented moped. Ehrin’s 2000 Tuscany series, called “On The Road To San Gimignano -The Moped Series,” was all inspired by her trip in 1998. During her visit, she photographed and sketched parts of San Gimignano, Volterra, Cole de Val d’Elsa, and other medieval hilltowns. Ehrin said, “My purpose in creating art is to explore color and composition as symbolic landscape elements and to utilize them as a metaphors for psychological and spiritual states. Traveling to new locations, both real and imaginary, frees us of fixed mindsets, creating new possibilities in our thinking. Where we are now, where have we been, where are we going, these are themes I am currently exploring in my life and painting.”
Ehrin recently took a trip in 2001 back to Italy with 13 other artists from The Wayne Art Center in Wayne, Pa. There they stayed at Villa II Mocajo in Tuscany and painted for a week. Ehrin’s series entitled “On The Road to San Gimignano II” was all inspired by her latest trip to Italy. Her paintings will be held in the Joseph and Grace Gorevin Fine Arts Gallery in the Holy Spirit Library until Nov. 3. Ehrin says, “Some people say people paint the way Tuscany looks, I paint Tuscany the way it feels.”
