Once upon a time when women were birds,
there was the simple understanding that
to sing in the dawn and to sing at dusk
was to heal the world through joy.
The birds still remember
what we have forgotten
that the world is meant to be
celebrated.
- Terry Tempest Williams
I am delighted to announce I have a solo exhibition at Cafe 817. I amintroducing a new series of mythical landscape paintings, Tangled Colors. The work cycles from naturalism to abstraction, but always looking at the landscape and those who wander in. I take license to shift between abstraction for emphasis and the sheer delight of allowing colors and imagery to mingle.
Nov 11, 2017
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Caffe 817
817 Washington Street
Oakland
(Map)
Caffe 817 is an historic venue in Old Oakland, having continuously operated for over 100 years. The sense of history came to me when I was telling a friend about my show; she smiled commenting that she remembered her mother having a show there when she was a child.
The paintings in the Family History series are based on personal family photos and 11th Century botanical drawings. Both of these sources represent mystery and the edge of changing perceptions; the botanical drawings are from a time when a nascent scientific understanding existed alongside a mystical awareness of the natural world, while the family photographs of people I never met represent a fact of the past onto which I project an emotional narrative to fill gaps in my personal history. When I compose the paintings, the overlap of sources creates a new story of its own.