Lois Griffel
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Lois Griffel recently received the honor of becoming a Master Signature Artist of the American Impressionist Society. This award has only been given to 15 artists in the United States.
From the American Impressionist Society website: We select our Master Artists carefully. We consider them to be leaders in the art community. They not only epitomize the highest level of impressionism, but passionately give back to society by sharing their knowledge. Our Signature Members have earned their titles by showing superb impressionistic fine art. Ms. Griffel highly qualifies for her Master's status because her life's passion as an artist and teacher began at a very early age. While teaching art in public school, she began her professional training at the Art Student's League in New York, where she studied classical painting and portraiture with E. Raymond Kinstler, Harvey Dinnerstein, and others. She later moved to Provincetown where she spent 10 summers painting portraits. At that time she met Henry Hensche, renown for his color theory and painting principles. Hensche became Lois' friend, mentor and a major influence on her art. At Hensche's retirement in 1985, she became the third director and instructor of The Cape Cod School of Art. The school, recognized for its legacy of modern Impressionist techniques is credited as the founding influence of Provincetown's and Cape Cod's involvement with art. Having run the school for 18 years and teaching workshops throughout the United States and Europe, Lois has fined tuned her skills and developed lessons that united her classical training with Impressionism. These techniques are included in her first book, Painting the Impressionist Landscape, published by Watson-Guptill in 1994. It is considered an exemplary source of learning to paint color and light and is still in print. It has also been translated into other languages including Chinese. She recently completed her second book, Painting Impressionist Color and has produced a series of teaching videos. Ms. Griffel has been featured in articles in The Artist's Magazine, The Boston Globe, Cape Cod Life Magazine, Cape Cod Magazine, American Art Review and The NY Times and her paintings graced the cover of American Artist Magazine twice. In the 25th anniversary edition of Cape Cod Life Magazine, she received the honor of being included in the list of "the 400 most influential people in the history of Cape Cod, past and present." Lois has had many one-person exhibitions throughout New England and has been included in many invitational exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Carmel, CA, and Hawaii. Lois invokes the names of Hawthorne and Hensche when she talks about painting and is proud of being a part of an Impressionist lineage: William Merrit Chase, Hawthorne's mentor, Hawthorne, Hensche and Griffel. She is extremely proud of her success as a teacher, which is exemplified by the hundreds of students who have taken her classes and are in galleries throughout the country. Quote from book, Painting the Impressionist Landscape "The thrill and challenge of standing before nature with all of her variety and beauty, is a humbling reminder that I must ever be a student . Each painting can bring new answers to understanding light, revealing more of nature's secrets. To be able to share this awe and elation in my work is my greatest pleasure." — Lois Griffel |
