Gail
Rodney
Media:
Painting, Mixed Media
Studio Location:
44-02 23rd Street, Long Island City NY 11101
Room/Studio#
207A
Website:
Artist Bio:
Gail Rodney was born in Pennsylvania and raised in Virginia, but for all her adult life she has called New York City home. She attended the National Academy School of Fine Art, Swarthmore College, and graduated from Columbia University. She spends part of the year on Chappaquiddick Island (part of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts), where her professional life as an artist began.
Her pastels of NYC were shown in April 2025 at the Fondation La Ruche Seydoux in Paris and has exhibited annually for 25 years at the Old Sculpin Gallery in Edgartown, MA. She participates regularly in other juried shows there and nationally. In New York she is represented since 2008 by the Gallery of Graphic Arts. She has created four limited-edition artist books inspired by the poetry of Richard Wilbur, Wallace Stevens, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Shakespeare. Her book, A Martha’s Vineyard & Chappy Sketchbook is available in bookstores. Her work is in many private and public collections.
Artist Statement:
For me, the process of making art is a meditation. I work best when I do not think about the outcome but concentrate on seeing and capturing, observing, and comparing one element to another. This approach is usually more satisfying than work done more consciously.
Any object or landscape can be beautiful when bathed in light, when color is most exciting. I am drawn to landscapes, particularly with water, and the urban experience of my NYC life. Over the past 30 years, I have worked in watercolor, pastel, collage and oil. Watercolor offers unmatched translucency. Pastels provide a sense of immediacy, the chance to draw and paint simultaneously, and the tactile sensation of working directly with your fingers. Collage is inventive; the papers take me to unexpected places. Oils are endlessly malleable, capable of the most subtle color, the most varied texture.
Drawing and painting deepen my appreciation and observation of nature, and I hope to convey the joy of these in my work.