Cynthia works in a variety of mediums and styles within the visual arts including photography, painting, and drawing. The industrial waterfronts of Brooklyn, Queens, Jersey City, and Bayonne NJ have become points of inspiration for much of her drawing and photography, which focus on the built environment at present. She works and lives in Brooklyn, NY where she grew up and raised her now adult daughter, but has been frequently capturing imagery in New Jersey in recent years.
Cynthia holds a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design and an MA in Urban Education from Adelphi University. She also studied dance education at the Harkness Center after studying Chinese Martial Arts for several years. As an educator since 2005, she has focused on implementing strategies to develop student’s creativity, critical thinking and metacognition in the elementary classroom and primarily teaches gifted and talented students.
Statement:
Light and shadow define a space and capture both a moment in time and something timeless. As a photographer, I love using the built environment in my imagery because of the possibilities it offers. I aim to make images that share the feelings such places evoke – especially when shadow and light make unexpected shapes.
I bridge this into my drawing and painting work, with the addition of thinking about brush and stroke while creating. If I include the human figure, I think similarly and consider the emotion that can be expressed through the composition. Most importantly, each image is the outcome of some sort of connection; often it is between myself and a place, between the forms within the image itself, between something specific to something universal.
I aim to stay curious and find these connections while creating images. This is why I have been continuing to explore different mediums and work both abstractly and representationally. I hope the viewers of my work can find their entry point to their own moments of wonder at the many relationships that are possible.
Website: https://linktr.ee/eglegrant
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