Chris Pagano spent most of her youth in the outdoors, hiking, fishing and observing wildlife. She began drawing at an early age and naturally, her first subjects were animals. Her interest in animals and art grew during her school years and she won many awards and contests with her paintings. She studied fine arts-painting at Kutztown University and Texas Lutheran University. Along with her college training, she has studied under regionally known professional artists.
Chris has illustrated for Pennsylvania Game News and has painted the covers for several Pennsylvania Farmer Christmas magazines. She won the first Lehigh Valley Conservancy print and stamp contest with a painting of a great blue heron. She has placed first in numerous decoy painting contests and has won best-in-show in art competitions in the eastern US.
Chris has exhibited professionally in art shows and craft festivals in the Mid-Atlantic region for over 40 years.
Her solo gallery shows include--1998- "Appalachian Images" 2007- "Images of Land and Sea" 2009-- Featured Artist, Elizabethville Library Arts Series 2015- "Woodland Wings"
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I have always drawn, ever since I can remember.Some of my earliest recollections are of drawing get well cards with my crayons for my relatives and neighbors. My grandparents were instrumental in my life's choice to be an artist. They always had colored pencils, pastels, charcoal or drawing pencils on hand for me to use when I came to visit. And they always encouraged me to draw something. Much later in life, I learned that these art supplies they had given me to use as a young child had belonged to their son, my uncle, who had hoped to be an artist too.
Artists are compelled to draw what they love and the love of my childhood was animals. I painted and drew them every chance I got. And even as I grew older and into today, my passion in life still remains animals. I dearly love them and have enjoyed painting and drawing them my whole art career. In my career as a professional wildlife artist, I have specialized in detailed acrylic paintings of wild birds and mammals native to the Mid-Atlantic region.
The most important aspect of a painting is that the artwork is based on an original idea. An original idea is one that is conceived of by the artist through something they have seen or experienced, felt or imagined. The ideas for my paintings come from seeing and observing the wildlife found in the woods, fields and waterways of our Central Pennsylvania home--walking in the woods and noting the way the sunlight plays through the trees, chancing upon a red fox tracking across an open , snowy field, a great blue heron slowly flying over a marsh, watching a cardinal at my bird feeder as I sit and sip my morning coffee, sitting with my cats as they lounge on the windowsill and enjoying the way the afternoon sun plays over their furry bodies.
I paint with bold,rich colors using acrylics on masonite panels, vintage handsaws that I find at flea markets and antique sales and vertical-cut Pennsylvania hardwoods that have been chiseled, re-cut, sanded, shaped and finished by my woodworker husband, Joe.
Now, in the "autumn years of my life", I've moved to town. And although my home is no longer in a wild or rural environment, I still enjoy, observe and paint the many types of furry and feathery creatures who visit my feeders, flowers, trees and shrubs in our back yard and gardens.
Being an artist is a blessing. I have been blessed to be able to earn a living from something I love ---to get paid to have fun. It's been a wonderful life.
