Hera Gallery Artists: Roberta Richman

In one way or another, landscape has been a visual starting place for my art for many years. The paintings in this show were completed over the course of two years, beginning early in 2001 and continuing through 2002. The work falls clearly into two groups. The first is a lyrical, soft and bucolic series of Cape Cod derived landscapes; the second is a group of ten dramatic, stormy and somewhat foreboding paintings inspired by a trip to British Columbia’s icefields and glaciers.

I always photograph the places I visit, some over and over and others only the one time I have been there. Sources for the work in this exhibition include places on Cape Cod I love and see often and mountains, lakes and glaciers in British Columbia that I have seen only once. I have hundreds of photographs of the same places on the Cape at different times of the year and day and in many differing lights but only a few dozen images of the landscapes that captured my imagination in British Columbia. Above Image: Color of Water, oil on paper, 2002

The work is based on the photographs and my memory. Photographing places allows me to isolate small parts of the landscape and examine what I see in an ordered sequence. Looking at endless horizons or panoramic views is fascinating and moving but also overwhelming. Focusing on pieces of what I see in sequence through the camera’s lens helps me to understand what it is that has drawn me to a particular landscape. The color, the contrast of values, the composition of shapes attract me; the photographs help to organize my impressions and supplement my memory, giving me a starting point. Thick layers of oil stick are covered with gesso many times creating a rough and highly textured surface. The images invariably change as I search for a combination of forms that feel complete. All of these paintings have gone through four or five versions before I am satisfied that the piece is finished. Above Image: Marble Canyon, oil on paper

Although the paintings all begin with a particular landscape image, they always change intuitively as I work on them. They are not meant to be literal representations of particular places; rather I mean to convey a visual and emotional impression of places that are important to me.