Shifting River Ways feature paintings that explore multiple shifts in the life of the river close to my home. The paintings shift through the combination of alternating and mingling different processes and images that sometimes abruptly change or subtly transition through the diptych.  The long horizontal structures visually and physically remind one of traversing landscape.  My husband and I walk the East River trail frequently and notice that over the last years our beloved river and trail are being destroyed through a combination of erosion, agricultural runoff, extreme rainfall, and flood damage.

The paintings push away from each other stylistically with some paintings being more realistic and others more abstract.  These approaches mix, mingle, or butt up against each other depending on the painting. The paintings transition from my previous paintings that include closely observed wrinkled cloth to play with images/metaphors/surfaces that lie on the cusp of representation and abstraction. Wrinkled fabric, painted from observation, serves as a multivalent entity that shifts, sifts and shimmers. In “Shifting River Ways” I strive for amalgamations that are clear and obscured, transcendent and earthly, known and seeking knowledge.

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