Modern Fresco Paintings is the first collection of Ali Cavanaugh's paintings, and
it follows her entire career using watercolor on kaolin clay to create her
modern fresco technique and the lovely work that flows from it. Beginning with
her hyper-realistic portraits and ending with her latest, more free-flowing
pictures, her use of light, color, and the human form captures the essence of
her models and their forms and feelings in a particular moment.


Cavanaugh's artistic sensibility
was developed by two important events in her childhood. Her dependence on the visual
world began when she lost much of her hearing through spinal meningitis when
she was two, and her creative spirit developed out of her being raised in a rural
environment where she had to create her own ways of expressing herself and making
her own fun.


She developed her stunning
modern fresco medium almost by accident as she was learning to apply the outer
layer of plaster to her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since that time this
volume illustrates her growth as an artist and her mastery of the technique.


These are lovely works, painted
masterfully. Both long-time followers of Cavanaugh's work---from the earliest "Sock
Arms" paintings to those who found her through more recent work like the Chroma series---and those who are discovering
her and her art for the first time, will be delighted by this collection.