What is the face of a river? Light dances and reflects its magic on water, as does stirred up mud make opaque what once was clear. A river has an existence too big for one portrait. These three paintings explore one experience of the river: Rapids.
Contemporary life keeps many of us from having a close relationship with the natural environment, as time must be spent elsewhere. It is the encounter of the river and not a literal imitation of it that inspires this series. Experience is primary in both sensation and use of paint. Brushstrokes express the water’s fluid movement and lead the eye through thick and thin, opaque and transparent oil paint, creating beauty and light. These paintings pull viewers to where we enter, to the place of no turning back, until the motion takes us and we must ride it out as best we can. Rocks seem to lose their gravity and visually float without leaving the ground. Space becomes ambiguous. The natural world is not neat and tidy with a principle focus for the viewer — many points cry out for your attention at the same time. See light glisten off wet rocks. Note dips and rises of the river bed as water races over and around stones. See the force of turbulent water pool and froth, float and fall.
Who has not felt the flow of life like a river sweeping up in its power, as we ride it out trying not be overcome and lost in the rapids of events beyond our control?
I work in a series where all paintings are connected in concept to explore my experience of life, which I strive to share with the viewer.