About Cindy Packard Richmond – The Artist

   I was taught to swim at the brink of a waterfall.  It was a small waterfall, but none the less unnerving.  Summers were spent on a small island, where I was once carried out to sea in a riptide.  Daily mandated swimming took place in murky salt water, abundant with sea creatures.  My days in a Whaler or a sailboat were calamitous.   So, why are so many of my paintings of water?

   Water swells, crashes, pulsates, roils and subsumes like an ill-tempered Norse god.  Water has moods, it is in constant flux, effecting what floats above, and lives beneath and even the land that interrupts its flow.

    Possibly because I fear water.  But I think the truth is healthier.  The small island from my childhood, is my sense of place, and is defined by water.  It is where I feel most myself.  So, I celebrate it’s influence in my life.  From dry ground.  For seventeen years, I painted in my studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Center which overlooks the Potomac River.

   Regarding my non-water work, I like unusual compositions and quirky subjects.  And always, the color blue.

  Cindy Packard Richmond is from New Canaan, Connecticut.  At Skidmore College, she majored in Literature and minored in Art. 

In the 1970's, art meant Abstract Art.  Ms Richmond was at a loss. One of her professors said "her art resembled smudge-by-numbers." Ms Richmond turned her efforts to Literature.

  Ms Richmond worked as an editor at Atheneum Publishers in New York City.  She published two novels Hell's Bells and The Mother Load.  She also wrote for food and entertainment magazines and for the food industry.

  She returned to art in 2000, taking classes at The Art League in Alexandria, Virginia.  She started with Pastels and went on to win the Joan Gehl Award at the 2001 Pastel Society Annual Show.  International Artist Magazine ran an eight page spread, Designing a Visual Feast in 2006. 

  Richmond turned to oils in 2006.  And though there thousands of pastels in her basement, she remains an oil painter.  

   Cindy Packard Richmond was juried into the Torpedo Factory Art Center in 2006 as both an oil and pastel artist.   Visitors most often commented on her color palette and mastery of water.