Painting these natural elements with oil is the way for me to communicate my emotional response to nature's striking moments of complex and simple beauty. A quiet river might evoke calm, or the powerful heave of an ocean wave, fear.
I visit small rivers seeking calm and contemplation, awed by the complex patterns and colours glinting and transforming on the water's surface. It is an endless source of inspiration and beauty for me. It has a meditative draw, whether it is a lake or an ocean and I am interested in why water-scapes can embody a sense of peace or for some, discomfort.
Water is a symbol and a source of life: primordial, spiritual, immersive, either calm or rushing. The feel of its substance and its sounds can be soothing as well as energizing, though so powerful it can be fearful. A slow river in a forest on a pebbled bed is calming to me to watch, grounding. In an ocean or deep lake there is no foothold once immersed, there is no grounding, creating a feeling of freedom and of being lost all at once. The balance of life and death is present, a lightness and a heaviness, peace and fear. For me those images will have no land, there is only water.
What feelings do a river bed provoke in others, where there is land and rocks as opposed to an ocean of liquid? Is it the palette which causes the reaction more than what the image shows? Who is drawn to which water environment and why? I hope to explore these ideas regarding personal reaction to water images of which all will be painted with realism though some are more abstract in form (as seen in Swirl), using images of water environments with varying points of view. I use traditional techniques in oil in order to achieve the depth and colour of water in my work. This involves the layering of many transparent glazes, each one deepening the nuances of light as seen in nature, creating a realism I strive to capture.
ARTIST BIO
Kylie Sandford lives and works in the Eastern Townships, Québec, Canada. She completed her BFA at Concordia University, Montréal in 1993, which included studies in Nîmes, France. Working with traditional oil painting techniques, she explores the subtleties of light by glazing: the building up of transparent layers of colour to achieve resonance and depth. Her work can be found in numerous private collections in Quebec, Canada, the US and Europe. She is a professional member of RAAV (Le Regroupement des Artistes en Art Visuels/Visual Artists Group), CMAQ (Le Conseil des Métiers d’Art du Québec/the Quebec Council of Artisans) and Gallery Arts Sutton.
I visit small rivers seeking calm and contemplation, awed by the complex patterns and colours glinting and transforming on the water's surface. It is an endless source of inspiration and beauty for me. It has a meditative draw, whether it is a lake or an ocean and I am interested in why water-scapes can embody a sense of peace or for some, discomfort.
Water is a symbol and a source of life: primordial, spiritual, immersive, either calm or rushing. The feel of its substance and its sounds can be soothing as well as energizing, though so powerful it can be fearful. A slow river in a forest on a pebbled bed is calming to me to watch, grounding. In an ocean or deep lake there is no foothold once immersed, there is no grounding, creating a feeling of freedom and of being lost all at once. The balance of life and death is present, a lightness and a heaviness, peace and fear. For me those images will have no land, there is only water.
What feelings do a river bed provoke in others, where there is land and rocks as opposed to an ocean of liquid? Is it the palette which causes the reaction more than what the image shows? Who is drawn to which water environment and why? I hope to explore these ideas regarding personal reaction to water images of which all will be painted with realism though some are more abstract in form (as seen in Swirl), using images of water environments with varying points of view. I use traditional techniques in oil in order to achieve the depth and colour of water in my work. This involves the layering of many transparent glazes, each one deepening the nuances of light as seen in nature, creating a realism I strive to capture.
ARTIST BIO
Kylie Sandford lives and works in the Eastern Townships, Québec, Canada. She completed her BFA at Concordia University, Montréal in 1993, which included studies in Nîmes, France. Working with traditional oil painting techniques, she explores the subtleties of light by glazing: the building up of transparent layers of colour to achieve resonance and depth. Her work can be found in numerous private collections in Quebec, Canada, the US and Europe. She is a professional member of RAAV (Le Regroupement des Artistes en Art Visuels/Visual Artists Group), CMAQ (Le Conseil des Métiers d’Art du Québec/the Quebec Council of Artisans) and Gallery Arts Sutton.
