Disappearing Dunes, oil on linen, 20Ó x 30Ó

When Joyce Gardner Zavorskas has a day to herself, she packs her backpack with 25 pounds of paints, brushes, and other provisions. She hikes out onto the dunes, on a mission to capture a sunrise in motion, or the patterns of sweeping eel grass across the sand. Zavorskas, who lives in Orleans, loves to explore the ever-changing Cape Cod landscape through paint.

She has been doing this since she was a child summering at an Eastham beach cottage with her family. As a young girl, Zavorskas wandered the dunes and did paintings on shells found on the beach. Now in her 60s and living year-round in Orleans, she is still fascinated by nature's unique compositions, exploring the world around her with a ferocious, child-like curiosity.

Zavorskas is always expanding her artistic vocabulary, searching for different ways to convey nature's events. In such images as Wind Driven Waves, a 24" x 42" monotype and Highlands, a 14" x 30" oil on linen, she captures the luminosity of hot sand glowing with orange undertones as easily as she portrays the monumentality of a sweeping cliff's diagonal edge. When she is asked about her lyrical interpretation of nature giving an unusual rhythm to her paintings and prints, she mentions her intuitive observation skills.

Zavorskas has participated in up to 40 shows a year and is a member of Boston's Copley Society, Boston Printmakers, and regional groups like 21 in Truro. She has taken extensive painting trips in the U.S. and in France and Greece, but has always returned to the Cape Cod landscape for inspiration. "When there is nothing but you, the land, sea, and sky, you get in touch with the environment," she says. "It brings you back to the basics--you become a real human being, not one tied to a car or a computer."

Zavorskas captures Cape Cod's landscape not only through painting, but also through printmaking. She works with small sketches and digital photos, which she translates into mono-types. These prints show the landscape's more fragile side in such monotypes as Opposing Forces (18" x 27"), where quirky tufts of dune grass stand like small outposts clinging to the earth, awaiting the ocean's wrath. Zavorskas explains that she has pioneered a kind of monotype process called "brayer painting." She uses a small rubber roller, or brayer, to deposit thin layers of ink onto Plexiglass, building a painting in reverse, layer by layer. She then roles the Plexiglass and paper through a printing press, creating works like Nor'easter (30" x 42"). "That sky--it has pale yellow, pink, and then finally blue, and all three layers add up to a wonderful atmospheric quality," she says of the print.

Zavorskas recently returned to school, receiving her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's low-residency program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 2008. "The MFA program pushed me to do something different. I was painting all these cliffs eroding, and then I thought it's almost like I am at the edge of a cliff ready to fall off--so I just took the jump," she says of a more recent foray into abstraction. Her new paintings, such as Battlefield, a 24" x 24" oil and Cliff Study, a 16" x 16" oil, still reflect a reverence for Cape Cod, but now Zavorskas places herself at the bottom of the dune, showing how transformational the forces of nature can be. With a thick impasto of paint, she uses the movement of her brush to mimic the movements of sand. "In the subtle activity of erosion," she says, "You can see the sand floating down like gauze curtains in the wind, it blows and changes."

In a more recent oil-on-canvas, Opposition (24" x 24"), a heavy mass of folding sand seems to slide right off the edge, yet blue sky peeks out from the top. This is a more visceral abstract piece, giving us only a glimpse of sky for orientation. The title, Opposition, also could describe the forces within the artist herself. She is interested in capturing the beauty and timelessness of the Cape Cod landscape, while also delving deeper into forces at work in our environment. "My work bears witness to a world transformed by time, oceans, and ourselves," says Zavorskas.

Joyce Gardner Zavorskas's paintings can be seen at the Left Bank Gallery, 25 Commercial Street Wellfleet, MA, 508-349-9451, www.leftbankgallery.com; Cape Gallery Framer, 245 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, 508-548-5271, www.capegalleryframer.com; or by going to www.joycezavorskas.com.

Erika Wastrom is a painter, photographer, and freelance writer who lives in Barnstable.