** PLEASE JOIN ME FOR THE OPENING SAT. 4.27.24 2-5PM at AT LAND 534 BROADWAY, KINGSTON, NY **
If interested in specific pieces or a price list, please contact At Land. We will also have several more fish jackets available by the opening. If interested in pre-order or custom jackets please contact At Land as well.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I’m giving up on dichotomies. For most of my professional life I’ve described myself as some combination of:
one part artist : one part book maker
one part writer : one part illustrator
one part fish painter : one part landscape painter
one part artist : one part angler
And on and on and on until… Well, now. Because as much as I appreciate a good organizational framework, I’ve been an idiot. It just doesn’t work. Neither side is discrete from the other. The art is in the mixture. That’s where I find the good stuff— the big catch.
These fish are not just leviathan sized because it’s fun to paint them that way. (Even though that’s true, too). It’s because the bigger I paint them, the more it reminds me of casting a fly rod. I find myself moving my brush-holding-hands and wrists differently–like I’m anticipating currents or dodging hanging branches. Pigments dart like fish out of a pool. Paint flows like the water it’s suspended in.
Likewise, these landscapes aren’t approaching IMAX size just because it’s fun to paint them that big. (Though, again it is!) I’m trying to connect these views back to time on the water. Those moments when you look up and see the hourglass of a creek shrinking into the sky then expanding outwards again. I encourage you to stand in front of these views, maybe just a foot or so back, and let yourself dissolve from (yet another!) dichotomy of viewer : image, and simply feel like you’re on the water.
These pieces were made from a cycle– inside my studio, outside on the creek, bringing my angler’s eye to the studio, bringing my painter’s eye to the creek, and finally realizing that it’s all connected as one process to repeat again and again.
-Steven Weinberg
