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Tag: Landscapes

Commune. Kate Shaw.

Our time here in the Bay Area is getting short. As of today, we have less than a month left in Marin County. We’ve tried to take full advantage of the area’s beauties, but every time we venture out for some peace and quiet, something gets in our way. All the other humans.

These paintings by Melbourne artist Kate Shaw, with their layers of ink, glitter, and powder, speak to the way we as humans are corrupting the natural world we claim to love and appreciate so much.

Mr. F and I don’t want to come off as crotchety old so-and-so’s ( although, maybe we are! ), perhaps it’s just that our expectations of what it means to spend a day in wilderness areas are a bit high. We want to see and experience renowned beauty, but in places that are so heavily populated, the enjoyment seems to come with a price. The best thing about these places is that they should be refuges of peace, but it’s hard to commune with your thoughts as Rhianna is blasted down the trail. While Shaw’s work deals more perhaps with chemical devastation and destruction, I feel like there is a spiritual decimation happening, too. Or maybe we just need to find a cabin in the woods for a while.

To see more work by Kate Shaw, please visit her website.

All images are via the artist’s website.

July 24, 2015
Surfaces. Mila Libman.

We have a tendency to make snap judgements, to see in monochromes. You believe “A”, so you must be “B”. We quickly demonize and categorize without knowing the full story.

In her monochromatic pastel and ink drawings, artist Mila Libman finishes with what is so often our beginning, a distillation of an impression.

How often do we refuse to see past our initial perception, to give another the opportunity to be understood and appreciated? Social media these days is a firestorm of quick judgements often based on very little truth. Perhaps we have only ourselves to blame, selves that are so wrapped up in our surfaces that we fail to allow our depths to be explored.

To see more of Mila Libman‘s work, please visit her website.

Artist found via K. Imperial Fine Art. Images via K. Imperial Fine Art and the artist’s website.

July 15, 2015
Curiosities. Mairi Timoney.

Mr. F and I do a lot of exploring in unfamiliar territory. Weekends often find us driving down new roads to see what we can find. Since we only stay in each place for a short time, we usually get to know the places we pass by sight, but never discover the people behind them or the stories they have to tell.

These collages by Edinburgh artist Mairi Timoney create a visual exploration of unfamiliar places. We’re given hints at the stories behind each place– a line of clothes strung between trees, a storefront, a suburban garage. The glimpses, like my view out our car window, give just enough information to drive the imagination to create our own stories for each new setting.

To see more of Mairi Timoney‘s work, please visit her website. Check out the Artsy Forager Great.ly gallery for prints of the two of Timoney’s collages!

All images are via the artist’s website.

May 29, 2015
Home. Anne Canfield.

Very early tomorrow morning, I’ll be at the San Francisco airport. I’ll board a flight that will take me home. I’m going back to Florida to see my mom, for what I really hope isn’t, but could very well be, the last time. She’s losing her battle with cancer and all treatments have been halted. We don’t know how long she has– could be as little as two months or as much as a year. Every time I go back to Florida, it feels less and less like home to me. And once she isn’t there, I suspect that feeling might just be gone for good.

Since marrying Mr. F and leaving Florida, my heart has been torn between here and there. But home has shifted now. It isn’t my hometown, it isn’t even where my family is. It is wherever I’m making a life with my husband. And these days, that is wherever we happen to be. In each place we find ourselves, I put a lot of energy into making it feel less like a temporary landing spot and more like a home. It’s something I learned from my mom, this nesting thing.

When I think about her back in Florida, I picture her at home, surrounded by her favorite things– the teapots she collects, my grandmother’s paintings. Her home, the house she’s lived in for over twenty years with my stepfather, felt like my home, not just because I lived there for eight years but because she was there. Once she is gone, it will just be a house again, filled with her things.

The goodbye is coming, but it won’t be forever. I take comfort in knowing that she’ll be free of pain and in my belief that we’ll see each other again. But in the mean time, I’ll go home to her and then I’ll bring her back home with me in my heart.

Edited to add– I won’t be posting to the blog while I’m in Florida. Freelance work has kept me super busy the last two weeks and my spare time has been spent with Mr. F. I’ll be posting daily quotes on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, as well as sharing a quick art find that resonates for me that day. Will be back blogging in a few weeks! Catch up on miles of artsy finds in the archives!

The paintings featured today are by Philadelphia artist Anne Canfield. To see more of her work, please visit her website.

All images are via the artist’s website.

May 1, 2015
Distillations. David Benjamin Sherry.

Before Mr. F and I began to travel, I rarely gave thought to the energy found in certain places. Sure I knew the intensity of Manhattan was vastly different from the quiet pace of life in the Smoky Mountains. But once we started traveling, I became much more sensitive to each place’s energy. In his photographs, LA artist David Benjamin Sherry seems to distill the aura of each place down to color.

As a painter, it’s something that I’ve given a lot of thought to. While each new place definitely has a different pace and feel, it’s interesting to me to think about how that might translate into color. You may think well, that’s easy, trees and water = green and blue. But there can be an underlying feeling to a place, whether a warmth or mystery, that might make it feel differently than it presents visually. I haven’t decided yet the colors of the Bay Area.. give me a few more months, ha! What color is your landscape?

To see more of David Benjamin Sherry‘s work, please visit his website.

All images are via the artist’s website.

April 17, 2015
Views. Christopher Ryan Russell.

Mr. F and I have an ongoing difference of opinion. When we’re hiking, he is all about big, open, impressive views. I like hikes that take me deep into the forest where the light does magical things among a myriad of textures. But no matter the view, the point is to get out and just see! These paintings by Christopher Ryan Russell take us down both paths towards divine prospects.

On occasion, Mr. F and I both get what we want– a journey that takes us deep down into the forest and then up and out into an amazing landscape view. Russell’s work well represents that dichotomous marriage between what lies beneath and what is to be found above. One would not be nearly as thrilling without the journey to or from the other.

Check out Christopher Ryan Russell‘s website to see more of his work.

All images are via the artist’s website.

April 6, 2015
Outskirts. Ian McLean.

A sense of belonging. We grow up seeking it. From the start, we are a part of our family, but as we grow and mature, we look outside of those familiar faces to find our community. For some, it happens quickly and remains unchanged, for others it fluctuates with time and seasons and the search is a longer, more arduous effort. These paintings by Ian McClean seem to be manifestations of that feeling of being on the outside, trying to find your way in or perhaps, deciding whether you’d like to go in at all.

We all know what it’s like, that dissatisfaction with where you are but the uncertainty of exactly where you belong. In younger years, it seems easy to find “our people”, circumstances often do it for us. But as we move through life and decide for ourselves where and how we spend our time, finding where we belong becomes more of a challenge. To a certain extent we’ll all feel like a square peg in a round hole, maybe forever. Could that be so that we’ll never get too comfortable?

To see more of Ian McLean‘s work, please visit his website.

All images are via the artist’s website.

March 27, 2015
Floating. Amy Bennett.

I think, in this world there are perhaps three kinds of people– those who love the desert, ocean lovers, and lake/river people. Mr. F and I are definitely not desert people and it’s taken us a while to realize we aren’t ocean people either. Both have their beauty, yes, but neither stir our souls the way a crystal clear mountain lake or river can. The love of lakes, for me, happened I think in childhood. I spent a good deal of time every summer on a lake– either at camp or with my aunt and uncle who lived on a tiny lake in Northern Florida. Two years ago we spent a summer on a lake in Idaho and it remains one of my favorite spot in all of our travels.

There is an easiness to lake life that creates an ease with the people around you– neighbors seem more neighborly, interactions are more likely to take place from boat to shoreline than by telephone or email.

Maine artist Amy Bennett‘s paintings capture the feeling of this unique existence. The artist begins by meticulously creating dioramas, which she then paints in oil on panel. The scale of the dioramas, when recreated in paint, gives the feeling of a world created by a child– doll houses and toy boats and tiny people. It makes me recall the innocence of those days, how everything appeared very soft, and fresh, and innocent and I was discovering a world that would come to be a part of me.

To see more of Amy Bennett‘s work, please visit her website.

All images are via the artists’s website. Artist found via The Jealous Curator.

March 11, 2015
Dualities. Doug Freed.

I find it amazing to experience a place through different days, different seasons. As Mr. F and I travel, such encounters are a rare treat, for we are usually only in the same spot for a season. But as life and light shifts, so too, does the atmosphere of a place. In his large scale paintings, Missouri artist Doug Freed brings us into the aura of light and mood in the landscapes around us.

In these intensely hued, yet softly toned paintings, we seem to be viewing the world through varying filters and lenses, the landscape changing ever so slightly with an alteration in light and shadow. The paintings seem to quietly call upon all of our other senses– can’t you feel the mist on your face, hear the gentle lapping of the water against the shore?

To see more of Doug Freed‘s work, please visit his website.

All images are via the artist’s website.

February 20, 2015
What the Water Gave: Jessica Pisano

While Mr. F and I are camping in Yosemite, I’m resharing some posts you might have missed the first go ’round! Enjoy!

If there is one thing we learned during our time in the desert, it is that Mr. Forager & I are water people. We need to see it, smell it, hear it. Whatever form it make take, whether the ocean, the Puget Sound, a lake, or river, something about it is essential to us. In her work, Rhode Island artist Jessica Pisano invites us into the sense of stillness and timelessness the water gives us.

Watermark, oil and silver leaf on panel, 60×48

In water, there is such a delicate balance. It’s presence, when contained, calms us, but when loosed, it can be an incredibly destructive force. It is essential for growth and life, yet slowly erodes what is in its path.

Fog Ascending, mixed media on panel, 36×36

Fog on the Horizon No. 6, oil and silver leaf on panel, 40×30

Sea Legs, oil and silver leaf on panel, 36×36

Pisano works her water series in translucent layers, creating a depth that reminds us of how the waters overflow and overtake.

Still Waters, oil and silver leaf on panel, 40×40

If you’d like to see more of Jessica Pisano’s work, please visit her website. You can see her work in person at a number of galleries in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as well as Stellers Gallery in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL.

All images are via the artist’s website.

September 5, 2014

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