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I believe that at a deep level creativity and healing are the same process. Having been inspired by the healing of others while I was working in the fields of death and dying, homelessness,  mental and physical health, I now get to explore my own healing while painting with compromised eyesight. A recent series of eye operations has left me blind in one eye and with double vision. Healing happens when I manage to touch the painting process with tenderness.

Hopefully, some of that tenderness appears in the finished work. Many paintings carry a history of earlier, painted over marks and colors. Because I work from the inside out, open to whatever might occur next, the result often has an unfinished quality with traces of earlier decisions. This reflects my approach to living—embracing the beauty and wisdom of the imperfect.

Using cradled board and the application of oil sticks and metal leaf, I’m currently exploring how sky, earth and sea relate and influence each other. Growing up by the ocean and in the high desert, I’ve long been drawn to distant views and the moment when light changes form into atmosphere. The muted tones I often use testify to the desire to create spaces that are undefined and contemplative and allow for uncertainty.

~ Jeanne Toal ~

Jeanne Toal was born in California and raised in Nevada where she spent her child and young adulthood absorbing the subtle beauty of the high desert.  Intrigued by the vastness of the landscape and the quality of the light, she began a painting practice that ended when she moved to the California coast where nothing 'excited her eye." After a long and diverse career in human services, she moved north to Port Townsend where, once again, painting absorbs her interest.  She works in a small studio surrounded by trees and her paintings reflect the changing atmospheres of forest and water.