GRANT McCONNELL
ARTISTS STATEMENT
RIVER SERIES
For the last couple of years I have been working on a series of paintings, which bring together two consuming interests in my life. The meditative nature of river travel by cause, and the history of our immediate geography and community are coupled here in a search for beauty and truth.
Solo canoeing, especially on western rivers, has left me with a vivid image bank to draw in current, in riverbank topography and cloud formations, in river valley wildlife and human involvement. It is in the ferry and winter ice crossings in particular that you can project back through to earlier times and sense some of the importance of the river to everyday life. These crossings. Some active, others abandon over the last 150 years, offer a glimpse of the role of these waterways.
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