Cindy Procious, born in 1965, is a contemporary American realist painter known for luminous, highly detailed oil paintings that combine technical precision with a refined contemporary sensibility. Working through layered underpainting, glazing, and careful color development, she creates paintings that feel intimate, atmospheric, and quietly evocative.
Deeply influenced by generations of painters who devoted themselves to mastering their craft, Procious approaches painting as both discipline and discovery. Through years of personal study, she has drawn inspiration from artists whose command of light, composition, and technique continue to inform her work today. Her paintings reflect a balance between rigorous craftsmanship and a modern sensitivity to design, mood, and narrative.
Alongside her layered studio paintings, she also creates alla prima works completed in a single sitting. Painted directly and intuitively without successive layers, these works capture immediacy, freshness, and spontaneity. She regularly offers them through auctions as an accessible way for new and longtime collectors alike to own original artwork.
With a particular sensitivity to color and light, Procious explores the beauty and significance found in everyday moments and familiar subjects, elevating the ordinary through careful observation and painterly restraint.
She lives and works in Chattanooga with her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Clay Bennett.
Artist Statement
Painting is both observation and devotion for me…a way of studying the world closely enough to uncover the beauty often overlooked in ordinary moments. I am continually inspired by painters who have spent lifetimes refining their craft, and through personal study, I have sought to learn from their sensitivity to light, design, atmosphere, and technical mastery.
My process often involves building paintings slowly through layered underpainting and glazing techniques that allow depth, luminosity, and subtlety to emerge over time. At the same time, I am equally drawn to the immediacy of alla prima painting… completing a work in a single sitting with directness and almost purely instinct. These paintings embrace spontaneity and presence, and I love offering them through affordable auctions, so that original art can be accessible to a wider community of collectors.
Whether carefully layered or painted all at once, my goal remains the same: to create work that invites stillness, honors craftsmanship, and reflects the quiet beauty present in everyday life.
Represented by the following galleries:
Pierce Galleries
Nantucket, MA
Susan Powell Fine Art
Madison, CT