Cynthia Mulvaney, Art in Public Places

Saratoga Springs Public Library

49 Henry St, Saratoga Springs, NY

December 2nd, 2025-January 30th, 2026

Artist Statement 

For over three decades, painting has been my most consistent passion and professional focus. While I enjoy working across all mediums, the majority of my career has centered on the depth and gravitas of oil portraiture. I’ve always appreciated the slow, deliberate layering that is essential for building history and character in the subjects I paint.

Recently, however, my entire studio practice has found new energy thanks to a completely captivating material: gouache. This opaque watercolor instantly drew me in with its surprising vibrancy and the extraordinary, luminous quality it gives to color. It offers a unique combination of speed, beautiful opacity, and a soft matte finish—a powerful, more immediate counterpoint to the careful deliberation require for my oil work.

This exhibition, “The Magic of Gouache,” is a celebration of that fresh discovery. It marks a moment of imaginative freedom—a shift away from the figure and into the ethereal. There paintings are fundamentally a response to how gouache catches and plays with light, translating my most fleeting, magical visions into something substantial yet delicate.

I invite you to join me in escaping into these mmagical landscapes and fairytale-like scenes, where color acts as a spell. This body of work channels the pure, enchanting power that only the luminous pigments of gouache can unlock, and I am delighted to share this new chapter in my artistic journey.