Judith Ferrara is a prize-winning writer and visual artist. Her poems have appeared in The Portland Review Literary Journal, The Comstock Review, the black fly review, Sahara, A Journal of New England Poetry, Xanadu, and others. She won the Jacob Knight Art Award in 2000 and a fellowship in 2003 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council in support of her manuscript of poems and paintings, Reciprocity. She exhibits widely and writes a monthly blog on creativity, Judy’s Journal, for her website:www.paletteandpen.com.

From her Artist Statement:

'I have come to understand that the process of painting is mysterious. When I begin to paint, it takes several hours of intense work before I know if I have a painting. Then the painting takes over. I listen to it. I know and don’t know what I am doing at the same time. I work in a state of curiosity and wonder where the painting will take me. I give myself to it and trust the process, the mystery. I have no fear.

While I find some subjects in the real world of interiors, landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes or portraits, it is not until I start to paint that I know if my subject, imagination and skills will merge and inspire me enough to produce a picture in which some meaning becomes clear. I am always asking: “But what is this painting about?” Meaning is finally conveyed to me in the language of emotions: joy, fear, serenity, or discomfort. So the root of my passion for painting is its dependence on emotion and whatever emotion dominates the subject. The search for meaning is the same if I look at someone else’s art or my own.'

List of Pieces:

1. Pulse Triptych Five

2. Three Houses II

3. Town VIII

4. Bird’s Eye View

5. Archipelago