New Light and Rust considers rivers, identity, place, stasis and flow. It exhibited at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as a multi-painting installation with four stand-alone paintings.

The installation River Island appropriates an art museum doorway, likening it to a river island where diverse forms gather at its shore, perceptually altering its structure and defining its character for a time. I clustered multiple, small, plein air and abstract paintings around a gallery doorway to echo the paintings’ river and driftpile imagery. I imagined the whole as one of becoming, much in the way that a studio feels active, open, and intimate in disclosing its flow. River Island also reflects the uneven process of fitting into a new home, of re-placement.

The four individual paintings, Owl, Siblings, Coolers, and Divers use the river as stage for allegories of competition, maturation, folly, and intrigue.