Artist Bio – Lory Williams Winford

I am a pastel artist and create paintings primarily using pastel on sand paper. I enjoy painting landscape paintings and capturing light that moves around a composition. Colors have always captured my interest and I am always working on ways to have color speak out in my paintings. The Impressionist painters and their way with light and texture has influenced my painting and learning from the beginning.

I’m primarily self taught. Over the years, took a few drawing and art classes and have continued to work with artists whose work I admire through workshops.
As a child I was drawn to pastels because of their vibrant colors and softness. The feel of the pigment on paper is very inviting and captures my interest.
My studio is my haven for creation and I prefer to work first thing in the morning, or later in the evening. I try to schedule my day and my week so that I have studio time in the morning. That might be reading a magazine with new techniques, sketching out an idea for a painting or getting in and creating new.

I’ve come to appreciate and enjoy plein-air painting. There is an inspiration that comes from the light, and actually being in the surroundings you are painting that can’t be replicated in the studio.

I live in Nashville, and moved here in 2015. It has always felt like home to me. I spent summers visiting grandparents and loved the time spent here. At an early age I was happily surprised with the support that artists received from the local community, so when it came time to relocate, it was my first choice for a new home.
Since taking up painting, one pleasant surprise is that no day is ever the same. Each and everyday is completely different, and this lends it self to excitement, and a sense of newness each time I take up a pastel or walk into the studio.