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Cindy House, born in Rhode Island in 1952, grew up in the coastal town of Bristol along Mt. Hope Bay. From the time she could first walk, she followed her mother, a natural history teacher and photographer, into the woods, fields, and along the shorelines to observe nature. She first developed an interest in wildlife art during high school while working at a local bird sanctuary. She chose to study wildlife biology, however, rather than art, while at the University of Maine. It was during her final year that the urge to express herself creatively became overwhelming and she took on an assignment to design, write and illustrate a small handbook on wildlife for the Boy Scouts of America. It was this handbook that prompted initial interest in her work. Without formal training, Cindy began her career by illustrating A Guide to the Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. She has illustrated numerous books including the National Geographic Society's Guide to the Birds of North America, Book of North American Birds for the Reader's Digest Association, and A Field Guide to Warblers in the Peterson Field Guide Series. She has exhibited numerous times at the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's 'Birds in Art' show. Her work is included in the permanent collection of that museum along with those of Bausch & Lomb Corporation, The Rhode Island Audubon Society, and the Massachusetts Audubon Society. She is a member of the Society of Animal Artists and the Pastel Society of America. In the late 1980's an exhibit of the landscape paintings of William Merritt Chase at the National Gallery in Washington, DC so inspired Cindy that she immediately enrolled in a pastel workshop given by Albert Handel. The focus of her work gradually changed from bird portraiture and illustrations in watercolor to that of pastel landscapes. Cindy has since studied the works of many of the French and American Impressionists and the Group of Seven in Canada. In describing her work, she feels that it has been greatly influenced by impressionism but developed into a technique that, in the end, is not at all like impressionism 
Cindy considers the greatest gift given to her by her mother was the ability
to see and observe the splendor of the natural world. She now uses that gift
to express herself with pastels and occasionally oils. Her goals in painting
are twofold - to depict the beauty of commonplace segments of the environment
and to capture a particular moment in time. Composition is a strong
motivating factor when choosing her subject matter. Cindy feels it is
important to paint the landscape that she knows and understands intimately,
that of New England. Likewise, her choice of avian subjects reflects the
more common species found in the Northeast. When out photographing or painting the landscape, Cindy
notes what birds are present at the time for possibly inclusion in her
paintings later. She feels it is often impossible to separate one from the
other. Lately, undeveloped scenes which can be recorded in Cindy's paintings
are getting harder and harder, to find, since she prefers to capture the beauty
rather than the destruction of nature. Local land trusts and various private
and governmental conservation groups actively seek to preserve open spaces.
If you enjoy viewing or purchasing landscapes, Cindy strongly urges you to
support not only the fine museums and galleries that offers the art for
viewing but also the organizations which directly protect what is most
important to the landscape painter - the land.Cindy and her husband, Eric L. Derleth, a Wildlife Biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, currently reside in New Hampshire.
MAJOR EXHIBITIONS:
1981 - 1995 - List of exhibitions on request. 1996 - Birds of America, Francesca Anderson Fine Art, Lexington, MA; Summer Show, Merry Wives of Windsor, Windsor, VT Birds in Art, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Wildlife Art Show, VINS, Woodstock, VT; Almost Miniatures, Francesca Anderson Fine Art, Lexington, MA; All Paintings Great and Small, Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme CT. 1997 - Summer Show, Merry Wives of Windsor, Windsor, VT; Birds in Art, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Almost Miniatures, Francesca Anderson Fine Art, Lexington, MA; All Paintings Great and Small, Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme CT. 1998 - Society of Animal Artists, Art and the Animal, Disney's Animal Kingdom, Orlando FL; Birds in Art, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Almost Miniatures, Francesca Anderson Fine Art, Lexington, MA; All Paintings Great and Small, Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, CT. 1999 - Cindy House, Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, CT; Birds in Art, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau , WI; Annual Show, Connecticut , Pastel Society, Hartford, CT; Almost Miniatures, Francesca Anderson Fine Art, Lexington, MA; All Paintings Great and Small, Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, CT. 2000 - Art and the Animal V, Bennington Center for the Arts, Bennington, VT; Impressions of New England, Bennington Center for the Arts, Bennington, VT; Birds in Art, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI. 2001 - Revealing the Artist's Hand, Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, CT; Birds in Art, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI, Best in Pastel, Realists, Francesca Anderson Fine Art, Lexington, MA. 2002 - 42nd Annual Art and the Animal Exhibition, Society of Animal Artists, Englewood, CO; Birds in Art, Wausau, WI. 2003 - Pastel Society at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, Birds in Art, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; 43rd Annual Art and the Animal Exhibition, Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum, Oradell, NJ; Birds in Paintings, Clark Gallery, Stowe VT, Palm Beach, FL, New York City, NY. 2004 - Annual Exhibition, Pastel Society of America , NYC, NY; Birds in Art, Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Envisioned in a Pastoral Setting, Shelburne Farms, Shelburne, VT. 2005 - Birds in Art, Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI, Envisioned in a Pastoral Setting, Shelburne Farms, VT; All Paintings Great and Small, Cooley Gallery, Old Lyme, CT. 2006 - Edgartown Art Gallery, Edgartown, MA; Birds in Art, Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI; Cindy House, Preserving a Moment in Time, Butler Institute of American Art. COLLECTIONS: The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum; The Audubon Society of Rhode Island; Massachusetts Audubon Society; Bausch & Lomb, Incorporated. BIBLIOGRAPHY: The Birds of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, Addison-Wesley, 1982, revised Princeton University Press, '89; At Timberline, Appalachian Mountain Club, 1982; A Guide to the Birds of North America, National Geographic Society, 1983, revised '85, '99; White-tailed Deer: Ecology and Management, Wildlife Management Institute, 1984; Birds of Squam Lake, Squam Lake Association, 1988; Book of North American Birds, Reader's Digest Association, 1990; Field Guide to the Warblers, Houghton Mifflin Publishing Co.,1997; Modern Wildlife Painting, Pica Press and Yale University Press, 1998; Wildlife Art, Rockport Publishers, 1999; Artists to Watch in the New Millennium, Wildlife Art, January/February 2000. Artists to Watch in the New Millennium Gallery Tour: Cindy House, Wildlife Art, July/August 2000; Underpainting Nature, American Artist, December 2000. Landscape Category: First Place, Cindy House, Pastel Journal March/April 2001. AWARDS: 1999 - Honorable Mention, Connecticut Pastel Society Annual Show; Silver Medal for Director's Choice and People's Choice Award, Almost Miniatures, Francesca Anderson Fine Art. 2001 - First Place and Top 100 Finalist in Landscape, Merit Award in Wildlife and Animal, Pastel 100 Awards, The Pastel Journal. 2003 - Honorable Mention, Landscape, Pastel 100 Competition, The Pastel Journal. 2004 - Honorable Mention, Landscape, Pastel 100 Competition, The Pastel Journal. 2005 - Honorable Mention and Fourth Place, Landscape, Pastel 100 Competition, The Pastel Journal. 2006 - Fifth Place, Landscape, Pastel 100 Competition, The Pastel Journal. 
Cindy at entrance to Giffuni Gallery, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio, for
her show, Preserving a Moment in Time, October - November '06.
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