Pernoctalian

In the summer of 2002, I moved from Portland to Pittsburgh. In the summer of 2003, I travelled back to the Northwest to visit Portland. Three Rivers and Other Watery Places is a collection of paintings of the past year.

Several of these paintings record my first impressions of my unfamiliar new home in western Pennsylvania: many of these images are of things literally out of their element. Other paintings record the transition of seasons, climate, and human interaction, especially along waterways, and west along US Highway 30 and the interstate highways that overtake it.

Water has long been used as a metaphor for inevitable change and the passage of time: you can’t step into the same river twice, the saying goes. But can you step into the same road twice? Single images of bridges, construction sites, and other intermediate structures continue to explore transitions in the landscape, while two-panel narratives represent a geographical or temporal change in which the viewer is the impermanent element.