Distillations of Place
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statement
My paintings focus on color patterns and changes within landscapes over time. Using digital media, I translate the observable landscape into numerical color values. I then create a system designed to process and reinterpret the color values. The system, rather than my own choices, controls the structure and outcome of the paintings. Finally, the information is interpreted through visual perception by creating oil paintings of the system's results. Even though I strive to recreate the colors as exactly as possible, color matching by mixing pigments and painting with a brush are imperfect methods to translate mathematically derived information. The cycle of moving through the sensual experience of the physical environment, to a mathematical system interpreting the landscape, and finally arriving at a sensual interpretation of the mathematical system acts for me as a metaphor of the cyclical and imperfect relationship we have with the landscape throughout time.
Remaining central to my work is an interest in the relationships of the landscape to time and perception rather than the traditional representation of landscape through spatial relationships. Within the patterns of time in the landscape, stories of human intervention and manipulation of the landscape unfold. The stories of the landscape tell us much about the values and philosophies of our civilization. With each individual story comes a unique pattern of color. As dams are beginning to be removed from rivers and more land is being systematically restored from industrial or farmlands to more closely resemble its natural state, the former notion of 'progress' in relation to the natural environment is being questioned and redefined. The colors of the landscapes around us are changing. The past vision of progress through controlling the land is, in places, becoming deconstructed to make way for a new vision of progress that includes the restoration of the landscape to a more natural state. The way we interpret and interact with the landscape is evolving.
In my current series, "Distillations of Place," I am gathering information from various locations that are undergoing intentionally designed changes, isolating the colors, and comparing the landscapes through their color patterns as they change through time. The color palates of the landscape are integral to the way that we relate to and perceive the places we live. The subtle shifting of colors mark the passage of time, constantly affecting our personal relationships to the landscapes we live within. My paintings are my way to bear witness to change. I work with a desire to better understand the color patterns that compose the landscape around me.
Read More About:
Finley
I spent my freshman year at Oregon State University as an environmental science major. My first dorm was Finley Hall. As a freshman, this name was meaningless to me. I never investigated for whom it was named.
Twenty years later I am living in the Willamette Valley once again. Only by chance did I discover the Finley behind that dorm's name thanks to the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge south of Corvallis, a habitat for migrating birds.
Near the refuge entrance are two adjacent fields. The first is a rye grass field that doubles as a duck hunting club. The second is a restored wetland prairie. In 2011, the rye grass field began a long restoration process to return it to native wetland prairie.
Because the two fields are adjacent to each other, I became interested in tracking the restoration process to see how long it would take the restoration project to create an ecosystem that mirrors the color palette of the existing wetland prairie.
The system I devised to describe the restoration process organizes the color palette of each field from the most prevalent colors on the top of the paintings to least prevalent colors on the bottom. The left-half of the paintings refer to the rye grass field; the right represents the existing wetland prairie. I visit the fields several times each season to track the progress of the seasons and the restoration.
I have been making the Becoming One: Finley paintings for nearly a year and there is a distinct difference in the pattern of colors found within each field. One particular development, the autumn burning of the wetland prairie field created a stark difference with its rich black hues next to the browns and tans of the mostly dry rye grass field. I intend to continue to visit Finley through the years to track the development of the fields through time.
Fern Ridge Statement
My paintings are the result of the progression of my relationship with the places in which I have lived. They are deliberate explorations charting the creation of a personal sense of place, becoming intimately acquainted with the natural and human-induced patterns in the landscapes and their subtle features, changes and cycles. I return to specific locations over a period of time, recording the colors of the environment and looking for the intersections of humans and the natural landscape. I look for the things that usually go unnoticed, the small things and the slowly changing things.
Fern Ridge is a wetlands area west of Eugene, Oregon. The paintings in the Project correspond to four sites in the Fern Ridge area. Coyote consists of two adjacent fields, one is in the process of being restored from its previous state of a rye grass field, the other is still a rye grass field. Dragonfly, another field closer to the Fern Ridge Reservoir, is in an earlier stage of restoration than Coyote. The last site, Fischer Butte is a nature preserve. It is the field that most closely resembles the ecology of native wetlands.
The Fern Ridge Project spans a year. Each group of four paintings shows the most prevalent colors of the sites arranged in lines progressing from the most to least prevalent colors during each season.
I often approach a particular subject through a series of closely related groups of paintings. In this way I can incorporate the concept of time with the medium of painting. Each individual painting within a grouping represents a distinct place and point in time. But grouped with its counterparts, the paintings begin to tell the story not only of the specific, but contribute to a larger dialog that speaks of the patterns within patterns of the ecology as a whole.
Each season I visited each of the sites and photographed the landscape, then digitally separated and arranged the landscape's colors. The landscape's colors are meticulously painted on traditionally prepared wood panels. The act of painting the colors is an essential aspect of the process. I see it as an activity that brings the impersonal translation of the landscape through digital media back into the realm of the personal. The imperfections and irregularities contrast with the sterile affect that a scientific approach can appear to have on the visceral experience of interacting with an environment. Mixing the colors and then performing the monotonous act of painting the lines as accurately as I can becomes a form of meditation. To do this I am required to spend a lengthy period of time contemplating each individual color of the landscape and how the other colors within the painting affect the perception of the individual colors. I gain a hyper awareness of the individual color patterns at each site.
A Year of Average Colors Statement
If you speak to people who have spent considerable time with rivers, almost everyone will eventually talk about the river as a living entity – its voice, its spirit, its knowledge. Once you have heard this voice, it's impossible to ignore it. If you begin to listen, it commands your attention. And then it begins to ask questions of you.
I attended meetings, listening to speakers talk about different aspects of the river to prepare us for the upcoming water project re-licensing from the Federal Energy Re-licensing Commission (FERC) that the Yuba-Bear river system in the Northern Sierra Nevada will undergo in 2013. Graphs were shown and studied. Numbers and charts are referenced. Models and studies are discussed that will produce even more charts and graphs and numbers.
The Yuba River has been tapped for human consumptive needs since the first days of the Gold Rush. The first hydropower project in the nation occurred on the Rock Creek tributary of the South Yuba, by a company that became Pacific Gas & Electric.
Today, the Yuba is the site of PG&E's largest hydro-electric project (the Colgate Project, now under the operation and ownership of Yuba County Water Agency), as well as the source for water sold to industrial agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley and municipalities in southern California.
For the first time in 50 years, four hydropower operators must apply for a new license for their scores of dams and hundreds of miles of diversion canals that segment and divert every major fork of the Yuba, the Bear River, and dozens of important tributary streams.
Re-licensing through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to manage rivers for ecological and recreational needs, in addition to meeting power generation and water supply needs.
But what is the essence of the river itself? What understanding is painfully absent from these discussions?
Science concerns itself with the quantifiable aspects of the river. This is what FERC will consider in the process of issuing a new license. Science will determine the best flows and temperatures for fish, the sediment distribution affected by the reservoirs, power generated by turbines, and irrigation allotments. Models will be designed to illustrate changes in all of these systems, to support or refute proposed changes in the river system.
As an artist, I felt as if I had no voice to lend to the re-licensing process.
The Year of Average Colors Study investigates a quantifiable esthetic aspect of a river I called home to add another layer of data to the masses. I chose four points of personal significance on the South Yuba River to conduct my study. I calculated the average color of the river for these four locations, averaging those findings to calculate the monthly averages. These findings were used to determine the overall average color of the river for the entire year.
The results do nothing to further understanding of the river's essence. That particular dialogue, a dialogue that will be absent from FERC's discussions, must be conducted in a language other than the one of numbers.