Arleen Targan has been painting farmland, ocean, lakes, figures in the landscape or still life with flowers for over 40 years. Her work is a combination of both realism and abstraction. She works mainly in oils which are vibrant and colorful, but she also works in water color and monotype. Throughout it all, nature has been always her inspiration.
“My love of painting begins first of all with a love of drawing, of getting down the gesture first of whatever subject I choose to paint. I see painting more as a process and not a means to an end. I know not exactly what the results will be but I feel the urgency of the moment, the need to get it all down. Perhaps that means painting my way into a place that is new to me and yet familiar. I try to find the feeling or the “soul” of a place or thing. I hope to surprise myself and hope to surprise the viewer as well….Sometimes the painting itself makes more demands, and I end up with pure fantasy. Sometimes it is simply the way I first saw it: the exact picture in my mind.”
Arleen is a graduate of the Arts in Philadelphia and of Skidmore College. She also studied at Tyler School of Fine Arts and The Worcester Museum School in Massachusetts. She lives in Greenwich, NY with her husband, the novelist, Barry Targan.
