Christine Cardellino is a member of the baby boom generation, born into a loving family and raised in Westchester County, just north of New York City. She is the eldest of three girls. She graduated from Douglass College (Rutgers University) with a degree in history. She was married to an Air Force officer, and their family lived in a number of locations in the United States and six years in Germany before moving to Virginia. Ms. Cardellino, her two sons and their families still live in the Washington, DC region.
Ms. Cardellino found a place in Art belatedly. Growing up, she considered it a magical realm quite beyond her, although she did experiment with drawing for brief periods and on her own. In Germany, however, she joined other officers’ wives in art classes taught by an elderly German artist, and there she discovered her passion. In the years that followed, she was able to indulge that passion intermittently. This included a period of more than twenty years when she pursued a career in physical therapy. She has been actively involved with the Art League in Alexandria VA, where she was fortunate to have studied with a number of gifted artists.
Ms. Cardellino’s early work featured landscapes painted in oil. At the same time, she nurtured an interest in the figure, regularly attending life drawing sessions. Returning to art after a hiatus of several years, she began to use acrylics to paint street and market scenes, many of which were inspired by her travels in Europe, Russia (then USSR), Thailand, the Middle East and South America. These paintings were recognized for their complex and dynamic arrangements of figures, and for their strong sense of light, space and immediacy. However, her work changed dramatically after she joined an art theory class at the Art League and found the themes and the approach to painting that sustain her today.
Ms. Cardellino has exhibited extensively in juried and curated shows in the Washington, DC region. In recent years her series “Fabulous Menagerie” was shown at Artists and Makers in Rockville, MD, and thirty-four of her “FACES” hung at the Community Foundation in Washington, DC. Currently she is working on a series inspired by fairy tales and folk tales. Always intrigued by the very human need to make sense of one’s world and life, she finds in these stories ideas that she can explore in paintings.
Area critics have cited her sensitivity to the nuances of light and shadow and the sensuality of paint, for her command of brush and medium, and for contributing to the dialog of painting through her work. Her paintings are included in private, public and corporate collections throughout the United States, in Canada and in Europe. She maintains a studio in the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, VA, where visitors are always welcome there.
Website
https://www.cardellino-art.com/
