Invocation is the title of my show at the Art Gallery of Bancroft. I have sixteen large paintings — mostly brand new — which depict my feelings of intimacy and belonging to the northern environment where I now reside.
I am leading a workshop at the gallery on Sunday April 23 called “Liberate your Landscapes” about creating personal and painterly work from your photos.
This is my exhibition statement:
Invocation
[in-vuh-key-shuh n]
noun
1. the act of invoking or calling upon a deity, spirit, Muse, etc., for aid, protection, inspiration, or the like.
For all my painting life, I’ve been a painter of landscapes: big skies, open vistas, distant woods and evocative atmospheres. And all my life, I’ve lived in the city. That landscape was something I dreamed of, and longed to be in, and would head to at any opportunity.
And now I live here, in the place I’ve always painted. And there has been a subtle shift in what I paint – no longer are my landscapes dreamy, distant, idealized places, but real, rugged and textured. My muse lives in these woods, and I am feeling the roughness of the bark, I’m hearing the rustlings and chirrupings, and smelling the brackish water of the bog. I am now a part of the place I paint.
