About the Artist
Cynthia Arieta
BIO
Cynthia Arieta is a painter living and working in a New Hampshire farmhouse built in 1731. Her work moves between contemporary realism, abstraction, and a hybrid of both, exploring the relationship between nature, humanity, and the deeply emotional experience of being alive. Richly layered and textured, her oil and acrylic paintings are rooted in observation, intuition, and a life-long connection with the natural world.
Arieta began her artistic career as a watercolorist before transitioning to oil painting in the mid-1980's. For more than four decades, she exhibited and sold representational paintings, developing a strong foundation in drawing, painting, and observation. Her work has been shown in galleries and exhibitions throughout New England and beyond.
In recent years, Arieta has embraced a more intuitive and expressive approach, moving into abstraction while continuing to explore the beauty and emotional power of the visible world. Her paintings evolve through a process of layering, scraping, revising, and often radically reworking the surface. Influenced by the American Modernists and Impressionists, as well as by nature, ancient imagery, and the rhythms of everyday life, she creates paintings that invite contemplation, connection and a sense of wonder.
MY ARTIST STATEMENT
Nature has always been a sanctuary for me--a place of beauty, mystery, and renewal. It is also where I often find the beginnings of a painting. Whether I am looking closely at the natural world or working from memory and feeling, I am drawn to the places where what is seen begins to merge with what is imagined.
For many years, I painted representationally, learning to trust careful observation and the discipline of working from life. Over time, however, I felt pulled toward something less predictable. My paintings began to loosen, break apart, and evolve into a more intuitive language. Today, I move between realism, abstraction and a hybrid of the two, allowing each painting to lead me somewhere I may not have anticipated.
I work primarily in oil and acrylic, building surfaces through layers of paint, scraping, revealing, and reworking. I often begin with an idea or an image, but the process quickly becomes a conversation between intention and discovery. A painting may change dramatically before it feels finished. I am interested in uncertainty--the moments when something unexpected emerges and the painting begins to tell me what it wants to become.
My life experiences have shaped the way I see and make art. Painting has been a source of connection, healing, and a way of making sense of the world. I am drawn to the enduring symbols and rhythms found in nature and in human experience, and to the ways meaning can shift over time.
Ultimately, I don't want to tell the viewer exactly what a painting means. I hope the work offers a place to pause, wonder, remember, or feel something of their own. If a painting meets someone in a meaningful place, then it has done what I hoped it would do.
Interested in a painting, have a question, or simply want to get in touch? I'd love to hear from you.
