Wish You Were Here

Wish You Were Here is a set of abstract paintings based on images taken from NASA satellites of earth; ocean currents, deltas, smoke, ice, and biospheres. Taken from above, they are a vertical look at our planet, the distance away giving us a patchworked, layered view of our world. 

Wish you Were Here is also a set of smaller (8 x 8) abstract paintings made from impressions of photos taken while driving highway 12, west, from Minnesota to the Pacific coast of Oregon. Taken from a car window, literal drive-bys, they are aiming for the horizon.

Both sets of these paintings explore how distance and light play into the way we see things. Colors merge and blur, light lays shadows and our eyes search for shape, for recognition; finding a beauty in patterns, curves and lines both natural and human-made.

There is so much beauty around us, but often we are too busy or too close to see it.  Stepping back, moving through a landscape, both near and far, changes our view of things, changes how we see it and in that seeing we notice the world; all the blues and earth tones, all they ways colors separate and connect. And how the boundaries are both solid and arbitrary.

I think this is why we travel.  To see something new about our world, to see it in a new way. And often seeing it means wanting to share it with someone else. So we take a picture.  We send a postcard. We commit it to memory. Even when we know we can’t keep it, can’t capture it, not exactly as we are experiencing it, we try.  Because experience is made of feelings, and feelings like air and light, wind and rain, shadows and time, are impossible to pin down. So we do the best we can. We point it out.  We tell someone about it. We photograph it. We paint it. And we wish you were here.

Gallery Hours:
Mon-Fri 7am-5pm
Sat-Sun 8am-5pm