Cynthia Buob
The Artist
Cynthia buob
Cynthia Buob is a figurative painter and art instructor at East Mississippi Community College.
A Peoria, Illinois native, Cynthia attended Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois where she earned her BFA. It was there in her first figure drawing class that she fell in love with drawing, and drawing has been her passion from that moment on.
She earned her MFA in painting from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. After finishing her MFA, she lived for some time in both Edinburgh, Scotland and Minsk, Belarus.
Shortly after coming back to the states, Cynthia and her husband moved to Columbus, MS, where they have raised their two sons. She works from her studio across the street from her home, where she continues to draw and paint the figure.
Cynthia’s work exhibits regionally and nationally and is in the permanent collection of the Swoop Art Museum in Terra Haute Indiana and the Meridian Museum of Art in Meridian, Mississippi.
Artist’s Statement
I make art with minimal planning, intuitively changing the work as I go. Early in my art education, an instructor told me to draw with the paint, and I have always striven to do this. I understand what he meant; he was encouraging me to replicate the immediacy and the transparencies that drawing embodies as well as discover the miracle of the mark making. The beauty of the brush stroke defines the subject and also shows action at the same time.
My interest in both painting and drawing the human figure has been enduring, and the painting of human flesh has always been a particular interest to me. My recent work has sought to marry human stories with the human form. Ultimately, all my human forms and depictions have an accompanying narrative. These narrative paintings and drawings come from stories that were told to me; the final product seeks to visually illustrate the story behind it. The story behind them can only be imagined. I like to recreate the thought that the image brings out. What is the interaction of the people with each other? If I were there, what would I be feeling? In these paintings I can create the story. It is visual storytelling.
In the painting The Power of Dog, the subject is the story a friend told me about her life living in rural Mississippi. This story bares a stark difference to my experiences growing up in an urban environment in Illinois. My reaction to what is foreign to me is delight, humor, and also fear, and I try to portray these feelings in my art. Much of my work is about the lives of the people with whom I am surrounded and my reaction to their lives. Collectively, we spend so much time sharing the stories of our lives with others, and in doing this, we see how different we are, yet we are the same in so many respects. Inevitably, this story-sharing has the ability to provide us with stronger sense of self.
