Location: United States
Cassandra Swierenga is a freelance artist from Chicago. Her training includes a BA from Calvin College, 8 years at the College of Du Page studying painting as a Phi Beta Kappa, and most recently the Art Institute of Chicago. As an adjunct professor at CSA at Wheaton College, she taught watercolor painting. She creates in many mediums: oil, acrylic, watercolor, fresco, egg tempera, encaustic, fabric, and large-scale installations. As a member of the Illinois watercolor society many of her current pieces are works in watercolor. She continues to develop series in oils also that explore specific topics.
In the first canvas of this triptych you see an ocean shoreline as the water recedes and begins to expose tide pools. Looking at the second canvas we zoom closer into the scene and see an individual tide pool with exposed rock, a blue chasm of water, and plant and shell material floating just below the shallow surface of the water. In the final canvas, we magnify the view even further and we are surprised by unusual animal and plant life lurking in the sandy crevices of the tide pools depths. In creating this piece I used a palette knife in very loose strokes to give a sense of the constant movement of sand and water.
This piece is part of my tide pool series but done in watercolor on paper and in a much tighter format.
“Receding Water”
“Looking Past the Surface”
“Tide Pools”
