By Julie Ann Bell
The National Geographic Society defines landscape as a broad term for how the surface of the Earth is viewed at one place at one time. Yet, in that same time and place, viewers will see or sense something completely different based on their personal internal perspective. Seafarers centuries ago may have looked at the same horizon with a sense of awe and adventure or with a bone-chilling fear of falling off the edge of the earth.
Out My Window. Nirado Sloan, artist
“Landscapes, those vast and ever-shifting canvases painted by nature herself, hold a mesmerizing allure,” says Tani Reeves, a lifelong painter who moved to the US from Peru in her twenties. She is one of a dozen artists at Trackside Studios whose exploration of the theme Our Landscape is featured in the Stairway Gallery from Saturday, July 13, through August 8. An artist reception from 2–6 p.m. during the River Arts District Artists (RADA) Second Saturday Art Stroll on July 13 offers opportunities to meet artists, observe demonstrations and enjoy refreshments.
It is this blending of our soul’s landscape—joy, fear, calm, worry, mystery, pain, pleasure—with the physical landscape—water, ridgelines, trees, snow, clouds, flowers, stones and gems—that creates the synergistic sense of something greater than ourselves. Attempts to capture this blending of time, space and emotion vary. Many of us take quick photos with a phone, some count on memory and others may sketch or paint on-site. Each person’s experience and how they attempt to capture the memory will never be the same. Thus, no two artists interpret the RADA monthly theme Our Landscape in the same way.
Beneath. Deborah Kolp, artist
Through photography; oil, acrylic, watercolor and encaustic paintings; and wire sculpture, several of the featured artists explored the varying perspectives of the Appalachian Mountains and the emotions that arise. Some scenery takes our breath away. For Reeves, nature around her “invites us to embrace the day.” A winter’s view may be “cold, desolate and yet beautiful” as depicted by Kate Colclaser in Winter Mystery. Sometimes, Al Steinbach says, the combination of the vista and the people you are with lead you to “feel as though you have been given a personal gift.”
Ray Byram’s After the Storm directly intertwines the physical landscape of Cold Mountain with the metaphorical landscape of our internal thoughts and feelings. “This was the first painting I did after my son passed away,” Byram says. “[It] is an emotional piece, indicative of the war my son and I fought against the disease that took his life.”
Exploring internal landscapes without placing them in a specific physical location, Deborah Kolp created two oil paintings: Beneath, which she describes as “portraying what is buried in the subconscious,” and Within, which speaks of “the unseen treasure we all carry.”
Her oil paintings invite the viewer into the deep reaches of one’s inner landscapes.
Trackside Studios is located at 375 Depot Street, in the River Arts District. Hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, and by appointment. Learn more at TracksideStudios.com.
