Ginger Knowlton

My artwork has always been driven by an engagement with the natural world – the sweep of ocean and landscape, but also the minutiae of plants, pebbles, raindrops. Though I first fell in love with the luminosity of oil paint, recently I’ve begun to add new media, including natural pigments and inks that my children and I have made from Colorado plants. My paintings are created in layers of attention to both physical and inner landscapes, moving away from the boundaries of direct representation, language, and linear thinking. I love the potential and energy and layered poetry of abstract painting. Most recently, I have been delighted to experience the world alongside my three children, who have taught me to see and experience the world in ways I might never have imagined, and at a pace that I’d almost forgotten. For the past decade, much of my creative energy has been happily devoted to raising my three children – and as my boys are growing and I’m giving more time to painting, I see how aligned motherhood and artistic practice really are – the ebb and flow, the need for patience, listening, rhythm, pausing, and the rushes of movement and joy. So far as I can see, my painting will always draw from experience with the natural world, though now with some greater awareness of how deeply connected we are and how inseparable, on so many levels, we are from place and from one another. 

I have practiced art from my earliest years – I cannot recall a time before the crayon and the paintbrush. Though I studied poetry for many years, I took as many art classes as I could while pursuing masters and doctoral degrees in literature and creative writing, and I’m honored to have paintings and drawings in private collections across the United States and in New Zealand. Visual art has continued to sustain my creativity and sense of self as a mother and as I have taught numerous courses in Colorado and in New Zealand. There is an essential creative correspondence between mothering three boys, writing and publishing poems and essays, and the sheer presence and joy that goes into the process and product of painting. I’m honored to have received awards for painting and writing from Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute and the Academy of American Poets.  I feel very fortunate to live and mother and paint in Boulder and Eldorado Springs, Colorado.