Brenda Cirioni creates vibrant, three-dimensional, abstract paintings on wood panels and canvas using paint skins, flora, and other oddments. The paintings explode with color and form. She white washes areas to create shapes within the canvas.

Many artists made shifts in process when the pandemic hit. When Covid shut down her studio, she reconnected with her wonderfully wild perennial garden. With her hands in the earth, the visually rich environment and the constant buzz of bees filled her with joy during a challenging time. The texture, color and dimensionality of her paintings grew from this experience. She says, “As with gardening - process and materials drive my work. I collect leftover house paint, palette scrapings, and remains from my yard and florists, collaging them together and using paint to connect them. I use resin as a way to interrupt the decay process while preserving what remains. The reverence I feel for nature and preserving our environment leads me to reuse discarded materials and to create something beautiful and uplifting.”

Collecting new works from Brenda Cirioni invites a wild celebration of color and texture into your home. Her work is bold and inviting to the viewer, who has a sophisticated eye. These are not so much entry level pieces. These are confident, celebratory and echo the deep textures and layers of not just her gardens, but the process of reflection. There is also a rugged edge to Brenda’s work. Amidst a floral abstract you also find a bit of urban decay in her colors, marks and movements. A subtle reference to old masters like Monet, with a bit of street on them, like the subtle balance between joy and darkness, exuberance and the shadows, like in her older Mazama series, which is still a favorite.

Brenda Cirioni follows her instincts and takes her viewers on a wild ride. Her work is sure to add drama and life to any room that holds a piece. Each one is not afraid to be free and you wonder if they themselves are alive, growing off the edge of the canvases, like the wild garden she tends.

What sets your work and your process apart? What kind of innovative processes or action do you incorporate into your process?

I love to paint and I also enjoy constructing paintings using various materials — I’ve collected “steamrolled” cans from walking the roadside, oil stained corrugated cardboard, my palette scrapings and more recently flora from gift bouquets, my garden and florist rejects. The oddest item to end up in one of my paintings was burnt egg that had overflowed from a quiche onto the cookie sheet — it was a deep golden brown to black. I saved it because it was so beautiful and it did end up in one of my barn paintings!

My materials are an important part of my process - I have dozens of quart paint cans from my faux finish and mural business days. Before I moved my studio of 18 years I started opening the cans to discover them in varying states of fluidity. I had hit the jackpot! I loved how I could pull and stretch the paint forming different shapes — laying them out on a sheet of plastic to dry or if it was just right I could put it directly on a painting. I discovered solid masses of paint in some of the cans so I grabbed a Saw’s All to get at it. Coupled with the fact that I hate waste, have trouble throwing anything away and am not into consumerism I keep my material costs under control.

I started using resin when I learned about a nontoxic product. It allows me to adhere large chunks of paint without fear of them falling off. It creates a beautiful surface while intensifying the color. I also resin flowers and bees (dead) and paint chips separately then add them to a piece. It’s an exciting process.

Brenda Cirioni—

An artist creating sculptures from paint.

How did you arrive making art the way you do?

I became a mixed media painter accidentally. I was struggling to know where I should place trees in a landscape when I ripped paper into strips, added dark brown ink to them and attached them temporarily — it looked so good! That began my addition of paper which lead to all sorts of interesting materials. I love the surprise aspect of creating - I don’t plan much and stay open to what may happen. In a way thinking is not for art making, at least for me. I use my eyes and gut more than my brain.

Where do you see your art evolving in the next five years? How do you plan your goals, projects or new ideas?

As of now, my paintings have more sculptural elements and I’m exploring ways to break free of the rectangle/square — so I will continue in that direction. I’m also interested in creating installations with my work and finding venues for that.

In the next 5 years I want to be showing outside of my current area and to have developed relationships with the wonderful museums we have in New England.

Brenda’s work comes from direct experiences, sometimes from places I’ve visited…if I’m hit on an emotional level it tends to show up in my art. I have no idea what will show up for me in the future but I’m intrigued with Iceland ever since I was commissioned to create an Icelandic landscape.

Brenda Cirioni is an American painter whose work is heavily inspired by her love of nature. Her paintings are characterized by her attention to surface and a sense of touch, and her compositions touches upon ideas such as impermanence, transformation, and regeneration. She’s exhibited in the Danforth, deCordova, Fitchburg, Berkshire and Attleboro Arts Museum. Her work was part of a traveling Brigham Young University exhibition Beyond Structure: Representations of the American Barn. Her paintings are in numerous corporate and private collections, national and international, including the Wrigley’s family collection. Cirioni’s painting, Dickinson’s Hope, hung in the office of Governor Deval Patrick and now resides in his collection. Cirioni received her education from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, MA, through the Diploma Program and the Fifth-Year Certificate Program.

She is represented by Renjeau Galleries in Natick, MA, Three Stones Gallery in Concord, MA, and Portland Art Gallery in Portland, ME. Brenda works in her studio, Skylight Fine Art, in the historic Gleasondale Mill, Stow, MA. She resides in Stow with her husband where she enjoys gardening and walking the many woodland trails around their home.

Learn more about Brenda on her website: brendacirioniart.com and on Instagram @brendacirioniart

She is represented by @portlandartgallery and @threestonesgallery.

On a Continuum with Brenda Cirioni

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