Eleanor Gilpatrick is a fine arts painter of landscapes, figural works, and still lifes that capture fragments of the world. Her strengths lie in her use of color and composition, as well as unusual choices of subject matter. Recently she has been expressing her feelings about what is happening in the world in her "In The World" series. She works in acrylic on canvas.

A realist, in love with the way the world looks, she celebrates beauty, but now, the beauty, which challenges the tawdry, ugly, and grotesque, is being contrasted with the "terrible" in the real world of our time.

Prior to her art career, Gilpatrick was professor at the School of Health Sciences, Hunter College, City University of New York. Gilpatrick authored four books, directed a masters program in health services administration, and pioneered courses in critical thinking and writing.

Gilpatrick has annual solo shows during the month of May at the Jadite Galleries, Manhattan; and is in group shows at the Riverview Gallery in Havre de Grace, MD. She has been in over 25 juried shows since 2000. Public art includes "Crosswalk Gestures," at Hunter College, Manhattan.

A profile of Gilpatrick's figural work and the development of her palette appeared in American Artist Magazine, November 2002. A column about her Aquarium Series appeared in Watermarks, Summer 2006. Her painting, The Shell Monument, was the August selection in The Emerging Artists 2007 Calendar.

Eleanor Gilpatrick's website is www.gilpatrickart.com
To see an inventory of her artwork with prices go to www.absolutearts.com/portfolios/e/egilpatr

I have chosen to be a realist painter because I am infatuated with the look of the world. I have fallen in love with the fiords of Norway, the rivers and houses of Bulgaria, the countryside of Italy, and the many other places I have traveled to, as well as the American southwest, New England, The Hamptons, and my home town, New York City.

But I have been overtaken by the 21st century's "sublime." The contrast of beauty and awe. I have to paint about beauty and terror in the world, and I am doing that by contrasting the places I find beautiful and serene in the United States, with the terrors of the war we are engaged in and the people it touches. For this I have to thank the heroic press photographers, whose photos show what it is like in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are now nine images in my series, "in The World." I have been asked what do I ask of the viewer; and having been transformed by doing the paintings, I answer: connect.