Cynthia Fontayne, “Spare Time Artist” 

The Brick Coffeehouse Café is featuring the work of Marysville resident Cynthia Fontayne during the month of March.  The name  of her show, “Spare Time Artist,”  reflects the fact that she has to make room for making art amidst the demands of a full-time job.  Oil paintings predominate the gallery display, but there also are examples of her use of  other media, including collage, photography, photo collage, pen and pencil, writing, handmade cards, web design, altered books and jewelry.

Encouraged in all the arts at an early age, she received an art scholarship to cover the cost of supplies and studio time from Vassar College,  where she minored in Art History and studied painting with Alton Pickens. Her primary talent,  writing,  led her to a career in marketing and communications, but she has never been without art supplies of one kind or another, which fight for storage space with her collection of books, old and new.

Long interested in architecture, she moved to Marysville in 2007, drawn to undertake the restoration of the 1920 Julia Morgan house in which she now resides with Jet, her Border Collie mix.  One phase of the house project (still underway), converted the former garage (big enough only for a Model T) into an art and craft studio, with painting annexed to the sunny sleeping porch upstairs. 

Cynthia serves on the board of directors of the Yuba Sutter Regional Arts Council,  and as president of  The Friends of the Packard Library of Yuba County.  These interests and volunteer commitments led her to chair The Big Read Yuba Sutter 2010, a reading and cultural program funded by a grant to the Arts Council by the National Endowment for the Arts.  

She hopes that “Spare Time Artist” will show that “Art” has many forms and definitions, and does not have to be great to be legitimate, and that it will encourage others to make time for making art, because she believes we all have art of some kind inside us, just  waiting for expression.