For over a century, our region has been the home of extraordinary artists from the major disciplines such as: performance (Helen Hayes), visual arts (Edward Hopper), literature (Carson McCullers), and music (Kurt Weill). Local Arts Index, a new weekly feature on NyackNewsAndViews, highlights the work of an artist who continues our community’s rich creative legacy.

Trine Giaever worked as a graphic editorial artist at the New York Daily News for a decade. Her work has appeared in New York Times, Ms. Magazine and The Village Voice. She has a BA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art.

Her work was recently on display in a solo exhibit entitled “NYC Inside and Outsides” at Pleiades Gallery, NYC and locally at “Green Acres and Simple Pleasures” at Piermont Strauss.

What Kind of Art Do You Make?

I would describe most of my art as landscape, even though I learned how to really paint at a strict “old masters” figure painting graduate school. I see the landscape as a more direct means of creating a mood. I hope I am painting the light and color to match the feeling the landscape is giving off.

Ideally, there are figures in my landscapes, and I think my most successful paintings are the ones that tell a story of the figure in a setting. I suppose this is the illustrator training in me, or the newspaper experiences, that present a narrative. I can’t help it.

What is your Muse?

I think Hopper’s paintings are very much like what I described above, and smack of what I am trying to do?maybe he is my muse? Mostly though, my surroundings are my muse.

I paint a lot of New York City because I lived there for so long and I want to capture it’s unique juxtapositions and incredibly complicated and vibrant vertical, horizontal, and underground landscapes.

And my husband is my muse, of course. That’s why I married him.

Oh and the kids are my muse too. My family makes their way into a lot of my paintings.

What’s Next?

My dream is to get a New Yorker cover. And a children’s book published. And a piece in a major museum.

I’m in a group show at Chelsea’s Pleiades Gallery from Feb. 19-March 16. And I have work on display in Piermont at “OutsideIn.”

I will be exhibiting at the Nyack Library in November and the Valley Cottage library in December.

Curated by Bill Batson

Artist portrait photo credit: Trine Giaever

Local Arts Index in sponsored by Maria Luisa, 77 South Broadway and ML Gifts & Accessories 75 South Broadway, Nyack, NY