Our childhood experiences are said to have a profound and lasting impact on us—and further, recent studies show that children who spend time outside interacting with nature and being exposed to the beauty of the outdoors, experience greater health benefits overall as adults. For artist Caryn Phipps, the time spent in nature growing up on Cape Cod, manifested itself in her choice of career as well as playing a role in fostering her inherent talent. 

Citing the natural landscape of Cape Cod as her biggest influence she reflects,  “We were an outside family, always camping, hiking or spending summer days swimming and biking at Nickerson State Park or exploring tidal pools and marshes at Gray’s Beach. Spending so much time immersed in the colors, textures and sensations of the Cape definitely leaves a lasting impression and something I aim to capture in my paintings.” 

Looking back at her childhood—a native Cape Codder, she grew up in Yarmouth Port and has also lived in Harwich—Phipps acknowledges she was probably always creative. Leaning toward being a shy, reserved student, she thrived on the positive feedback she received from her teachers surrounding her pastime, encouraging her to keep pursuing drawing and painting. She remembers, “I found it gratifying, the process of being creative, almost like I was creating my own little worlds and stories through images.” This little planted seed that Phipps would nourish and practice would later bear fruit, in more ways than one, in the form of an education—she earned a degree from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston—and later, a career. “Art teachers were always my favorite people,” she recalls, “You could tell they saw the world differently from other adults, and they encouraged us to use different parts of our brain, tapping into talents we couldn’t use or express in other parts of life. Teachers gave me insight into different cultural histories through art making and expanded our worlds just a little bit.” Now an art teacher herself—a role that can be difficult to navigate as teaching is an exhausting, consuming career, leaving her dedicated time as an artist constrained—her goal is to impress upon her students the important role the arts play in their daily lives. 

While she did spend time using oil paints years ago, Phipps now prefers to work with acrylics, and the addition of some experimenting with mixed media, “I like the immediacy of acrylics. They dry faster and there are so many great additives you can experiment with to create different effects like thickening them, thinning them out, creating washes of color or the building up of texture,” she notes. 

Her work is warm and inviting, and looking at the images, whether of boats, waves, beaches, or a beach fence with rosa rugosa trailing alongside, there is a familiar sense of movement and energy present. Some of her paintings are personal, echoing places that hold sentimental value to Phipps, like Lovers, a nod to Jeremy Point in Wellfleet where she and her husband shared their first date. “Some of my paintings are not literal, but a reflection of the colors, moods and textures of a time and place in my life. I have a series of small paintings I did from my time living on Nantucket that are more like impressions of remembered places,” the artist professes. 

Her upcoming project, that of motherhood, will alter Phipps’ course a bit for the immediate future, but with her newfound inspiration, she plans to hit the ground running in a new in-home studio which will allow her the space to tackle larger projects. 

Paintings and prints are available through the artist’s website, carynphipps.com and on Instagram
@carynphippsart, where Phipps also shares updates on shows, gallery events or sales.