CEH-River Paintings Statement

The Yakima River Paintings: Part I

These works were painted on site along the edges of the Yakima River. I spent time along its shores and on the river paddling in the front of a canoe. These experiences opened me to the river's rhythms and I hope those rhythms have come through my paint brushes onto the canvas.

Although the river is "reigned in" for civilization's uses, the possibility of the river being beyond our immediate control remains. Every year there are deaths as the currents swell to their swiftest, wildest flow. Yet a few years ago, we felt the drought of no mountain snow pack that left the river's rocks exposed like bones on a starving man.

What is the face of a river? Light dances and reflects its magic on water, as does stirred up mud make opaque what was once clear. Through my paintings I hope the viewer will be introduced to the Yakima River, as an existence with a character too big for just one portrait. The river has many different aspects in varying conditions. That a river can have a personality and an existence as real as our own is not a new perspective. Contemporary life keeps many of us from having a close relationship with the natural environment, as time must be spent elsewhere to succeed in our culture.

It is the encounter of the outdoors, and not a literal imitation of it, that inspires this series of work. These paintings are true to my modern roots where the experience is primary over illustration, in both sensation and media. When you go through rapids in a canoe, you are very aware of the rocks and water flow, so as not to hit the rocks, and in those times there is no horizon line of distant space. All is close and intimate like an embrace and the consequences are personal. This body of work is painted from that vantage point and not with the linear perspective usually ascribed to landscapes or paintings of the natural environment.

While painting I'm aware of color and its dependence on light to exist, and how light changes in time, altering the color across physical surfaces. I attempt to keep the brilliance and intensity of the colors by not mixing the paint pigments. I want the pure color relationships with the qualities of oil paint to get the viewer's attention. Light and color are inseparable.

When you're outside there isn't one direct light source; the sun is overhead touching everything on the surface to some degree. Light bounces off a fraction of an inch of water, creating a mirror with an illusion of space without the depth. Try to enter and you're thrown back. 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 principal focus for the viewer -- as with any overwhelming complex personality larger than your own, many points cry out for your attention at the same time. Until you become familiar enough to see through the camouflage, your eyes will play tricks on you. What is shallow and what is deep? What is close and what is distant? What's behind the thicket I can't penetrate? Do I really want to know? Am I willing to pay the price to find out? What has moved and what only looks to be the same, as time has passed changing everything and nothing as the sun moves across the sky.