Galleries West Fine Art

Brigitte Curt

Discipline(s): Oil

Accolades: Memberships: California Academy of Painters: Founding Member, Education Director, Landscape Instructor; American Impressionist Society; National Association of Women Artists; Oil Painters of America.

Bio:
Brigitte Curt, born in Paris, France, is a true "French Impressionist" in the California landscape. As a youth, she spent much time in open nature in Provence where her family stayed many months a year in their estate by the sea. The intimate contact with nature and its creatures, and the sense of limitless space, marked forever her young and enthusiastic soul, as she was running free in the hills, nourished by humanistic philosophy and artistic endeavors. She studied philosophy at the University of Paris, and later earned degrees in ethnography and ethno-sociology at the University of Alger, Algeria and Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Africa.

Afterwards, Brigitte spent nearly ten years traveling, studying and working among the Targui in the Sahara and in villages of the rainforest in West Africa, before returning to Paris. There she began painting semi-abstract, cosmic landscapes in pastels and mixed media as well as developing paintings from her African photography.

In 1987, Brigitte relocated to California, where she began a full-time academic training program, studying color theory, rendering, materials of drawing and painting, portraiture, form and composition, life drawing, and of course, her beloved plein air painting. Brigitte's work developed and matured through three years as studio assistant to Ovanes Berberian, whose mentoring influenced her color harmony and brushwork.

In 1992, she began teaching plein air landscape painting to a small group of enthusiastic students. Her classes have grown continuously ever since, and she now teaches two full classes every week, regular landscape workshops in the Californian countryside, and workshops in Provence every summer. She is also founder and leader of the Bay Area Contemporary Plein Air Circle (BACPAC).

Brigitte loves to travel with her paint box. She has painted in Australia, China, several times in Russia, and around the western United States, including Oregon, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico and all along the California Coast.

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