Kristen Garneau lives here in Northern California and has spent a lifetime with the inspiration that comes from ever-changing beautiful landscape – forest, mountain and ocean. Her concern is not with describing specific places in paint, but to render the image down to its pure essence to convey her personal experience of it. She is fascinated with the shifting light and weather – magical moments when the sun filters through mist and clouds at sunrise, sunset, dusk and dawn – flashes of mystery and grace.

Here is the artist’s statement about the work…

"Years ago, I lay curled up against the beach grasses at Limantour Beach with my then 6 and 8 year old sons watching the wind bring the fog on shore. We huddled down on the warm sand eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches watching the birds and bugs go about their daily duties while just over the sand dunes, the oceans constant breathing softly soothed our afternoon. We watched clouds become whales, cartoons and running dogs. I watched those cloud-bodies dissolve almost as soon as they came into being, so that tacitly I came to understand the nature of impermanence. “Beach Grass” is from a memory of that moment. And, as my sons are now adults with their own children, an ode to impermanence.

All my paintings in this show are about impermanence and fleeting moments that punctuate and speak to us for only a moment. Bowls of sea shells, oak galls, leaves, grasses, twigs and rocks in my studio serve to guide me with color. Layers of color, one over the next and then again help to augment the pieces to achieve a kind of history.

For me, the love of big, spare, landscapes are more a metaphor for what is linked above and below and beyond reach. It is not a fixed place but a path to a contemplative place. And finally, it is an expression of loyalty to the earth – which sustains me. The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the panel the same qualities as earth."           - Kristen Garneau, July, 2020