Harriet Bernstein

In the 1980’s, I lived in SoHo, NY. It was the big art boom that launched David Salle, Julian Schnabel and others into fame and fortune. It was a heady time and though I had moved to New York for improvisational dance, I saturated my eyes with art.

Somewhere around then, my artist boyfriend took me to see Agnes Martin’s meditative canvases of broad bands of pastel colors. The soft, gentle pink in those 6’ canvases stole my heart. They touched a strong femininity in me that never left my mind. I knew one day I would have to paint pink paintings.

It was The Vineyard, with some help from the pandemic, that got me painting. What started on a dining room table and soon took over my living room had me at an artist residency in Vermont for the month of October to paint a series of pink paintings for a show. Those 23 paintings launched me as a painter who paints in pink. It turns out pink is the color of love and we all need more of it.

Currently, I am making an effort to paint a series of white paintings. But they all come out pink. Agnes Martin once said, “The attractiveness of art work is that it is adventurous, strenuous, and joyful”. I so concur.