Eleanor Bryan is a primarily self-taught artist working in oils, alkyd oils and watercolors. She has described her art as an attempt to express beauty through color. "When I begin a painting, it often starts out realistic, but it doesn't feel like mine until it becomes impressionistic. Memory and fantasy often find their way into my still life paintings . . . sometimes shadows of 'little people' appear. These are playful, spontaneous occurrences - sometimes joyous, sometimes mysterious."
Eleanor remembers that she was sensitive to color from an early age, but she grew up in a small coal-mining village in northwestern Pennsylvania where art was neither available nor encouraged. In the interests of practicality, she prepared herself for a career in nursing. Then she attended a lecture called "In Defense of Modern Art" that featured Jackson Pollock's canvases of splattered paint. "I left saying if that's art, I can do it better. The next day, I bought myself some oil paints."
The artist paints what she knows best - flowers and children. "But nursing has also had its influence in exposing me to the process of dying. Some of my paintings have been a way of coping with darker periods."
Eleanor Bryan's paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibits and juried shows in Baltimore and Westminster, Maryland, and in the Harrisburg, Camp Hill, Mechanicsburg, and York areas of Pennsylvania. Her work has been recognized with first and second prizes and an "Award of Excellence," and her paintings are included in private collections in the United States, Italy, England and Japan.
The Eleanor Bryan exhibit will hang at HACC until July 28. Summer exhibit hours are 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to noon Friday. The campus will be closed Friday, July 4. For more information, call 337-3855.