About the artist
Born in San Francisoco and raised in the Santa Clara Valley, van Hulsteyn moved to Sacramento and attended CSUS where she studied print-making with Sylvia Lark, painting with Jack Ogden and Oliver Jackson and Joan Moment and conceptual art with Stephen Kalltenbach. She received a BA in Fine Art from CSUS.
After beginning a family and finding it necessary to earn a living, she continued to create art while she worked for a large corporation for twenty years. Continuing her studies in art, she completed a Master’s Degree in Fine Art at CSUS (2004) where she studied with Tom Monteith, Sarah Flohr and Daniel Frye. During this time, she worked in large paintings that incorporated landscape and ornamentation and she worked in metal and collaborated on neon/paint works with her husband Dave van Hulsteyn. Landscape, ornamentation and the fate of the now exinct Passenger Pigeon were themes in her inquiries.
In 2006-2007, van Hulsteyn studied at TransArt Institute in Krems Austria and received her MFA in Visual Arts and was mentored by artist and sculptor Cathy Stone. During this period of time, the Passenger Pigeon was revisited and neon sculptures, soap sculptures and paintings were created.
Van Hulsteyn continued to work in order to support her family and earned a Special Education Certification from Touro University. She taught young adult programs through Elk Grove Unified School District and was a social worker for Alta California Regional Center.
Van Hulsteyn has delved into history and naturalism; she studied extensively the fate of the Passenger Pigeon and incorporated imagery of this now extinct creature in many works. She focused on images from her everyday experience and created a body of work that incorporated images of piles of garden refuse, fire hydrants, power poles and lines, portable toilets, trash bins, farm equipment and images including drought and fire.
In the past ten years, van Hulsteyn has spent a great deal of time outdoors, particularly in the Yolo Causeway area, hiking with her husband Dave and her dog Alvie, and now Eddie, looking intensely at the ever-changing landscape. Many of her more recent works are paintings from life in the areas surrounding Davis, created as a result of hiking and looking and considering what she pays attention to. She studied Plein-air painting with Tom Hughes, an accomplished Plein air painter who was based in Oakland/Alameda and she enjoyed painting gritty street scenes with Tom. She was once lectured to “pay attention to what you pay attention to” and this has struck a chord in her. She pays attention to some beautiful and some not so beautiful things, but they show up in paintings and she works a great deal in Plein-air these days, typically using oil paint, and most recently watercolor. Van Hulsteyn has studied color concepts and painting from life from artist/painter Elio Comacho in recent years. She values his knowledge of paint/painting/color and feels his workshops have taken her work to a new level.
The journey continues…
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