estellehrt@gmail.com
Estelle's Classes

Estelle was born in New York State and raised on a 200-acre farm in Wallkill at the foot of the Shawangunk Mountains (90 miles north of NYC). Her mother was a Pratt Institute graduate and art and design were always a part of her life. The mountains and countryside where she grew up greatly influenced her love of the landscape and feeling for the colors of nature both literally and as a basis of fantasy for her abstract impressionistic paintings.

She received an Associates degree in business from Rider College in Trenton, New Jersey. Later she studied art in Italy as part of the University of Georgia's Art Abroad program and then earned a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts with a Concentration in Painting and Drawing from Georgia State University. She graduated Summa Cum Laude as a Faculty Scholar.

Since graduating Estelle has been an instructor of watercolor painting, drawing and book arts at Jacquelyn Casey Hudgens Center for the Arts and was an instructor for the Staff Development program for Gwinnett County Art Educators. She also instructed pre-teens in drawing and watercolor painting at Pinckneyville Community Center and adult watercolor instruction at OCEE as part of the Fulton County Arts Council. She is currently teaching oil painting and Watercolor at the Spruill Center for the Arts in Atlanta and works in her own studio in Stone Mountain

Artist's Statement

To explore and interpret the landscape as an artist has occupied me throughout the past few decades, especially in regard to color and form. The miracle of the earth's surface and it's geological history compels me to put on canvas and paper what I see, know and feel about all of it. Local color, however,



has never really been an issue for me in my art and so, I feel free to alter and enhance color wherever and whenever the mood strikes. Pushing this color to extremes is an important issue and I believe that this, and experimentation is what brings me into the studio to work or takes me out into the world to gather material and observe with my pencil and sketchbook in hand. Many times I am struck with the geology of the world being an obvious metaphor for man's development as a physical and an emotional being. An example of this is a glacial melt after the ice age. Another is the obvious destruction of a flood and yet, silt and new soil comes with it to refresh and renew the earth. These comparisons are endless and often trigger my desire to paint. Because of this, I often include figurative shapes in the rocks, trees, grasses and topography in my paintings.