Opening Friday, June 20, 5-8pm
Diane Charyk Norris is a visual artist of environmental spaces. As a landscape painter influenced by a background in waterfront planning and architecture, she works in acrylics, oils, inks, charcoal, watercolor, printmaking, and photography.
The phenomenon of patterns in water and ice offers insight into geometries found in nature. This collection of paintings, monotypes, and drawings explores changing tidelines, coastal underwater reflections, and retreating glaciers to identify timeless patterns of vast elemental space.
In the tideline paintings, the systemic network of channels in tide flats at the mouth of a river and rocky tidal coves shapes a dialogue between sky, water, and land. My response is made of interconnected marks, blended light, and color passages to invite contemplation and exploration beyond the surface.
In the monotypes, I have drawn the underlying structure of tessellation patterns in underwater reflections to create a vast sense of space and context for playful overlays of transparent inks.
In the charcoal drawings, the tracking of a river of ice is traced as it flows from the snow fields at the top to the bottom valleys. Glaciers appear static, but have tremendous power as they quietly ooze downhill. The ink drawings explore the marking of these tracks with natural ink flow and animation of the white spaces between.
In watching and painting these subjects, I find stillness and quiet in the midst of extraordinary energy and movement and contemplate changes we are facing on the New England coast with deep respect. I invite the viewer to enjoy these watery worlds and ponder on the forces that shape them.
-Diane Charyk Norris