Artist Statement

April Quast is an emerging artist from Glastonbury, CT that seeks to share her passion for color, movement, dance and yoga with the world. She boldly paints and draws colorful and whimsical abstractions that explore the internal energy that motivates the dance and yoga experience. In 1997 she was introduced to West Coast Swing and she found her passion for dance and the lead and follow experience. In 2008 she graduated with her Masters in Art Education from Central CT State University. It was through her graduate exhibition and her own dance experiences that April began her focus on dance using acrylics and color pencils. April has a passion for the small details of beauty that embellish the world. Each of her works have an overlying focus on the figure, investigating external inspiration of the body’s lines and then using textures and patterns inspired by nature to captivate the internal energy of the dance and yoga experience. As you examine, her work try to bring yourself beyond finding the legs, arms, and heads of the figures. Instead, contemplate the influence of the energy involved in shaping the figures. Where do the figures end and the energy begin? What connections and energies are choreographing the movements you see before you? Allow yourself to see the music. If you dance you know that dance is not just a movement that your body makes, it is an energy that is a reaction to music, it is an energy that radiates from your heart and soul. Colors dance. Music moves. If you do yoga, you know the intense energy and strength it takes to be motionless and you know the feeling of energy radiating through your body. Bodies are energized. Strength is exposed. As you view April’s art, open yourself and allow yourself to experience it.