About a river - Apropos d'un fleuve

This 'painting' began as a response to a request to participate for a third time in the 'Reveillez vos Talents' in the village hall during the last weekend in April. This 'expo' consisted of amateur painting groups - this time three separate and different ones, patchwork, mosaics, knitting, horn carving and the school also organised a plant sale and a 'vide-grenier' (boot sale).

I don't exhibit as part of a group and I don't try to sell and anyway mostly village people are bemused by my 'art'.

I do however, try to engage somehow with people who come to look at the expo. Last year I tried to get kids - or people to draw - but failed. People have very conventional ideas about what art 'should' be. Anyhow this is the local environment in which I try and make my experiments in art.

The idea of painting a river is something I have played with before. I will illustrate my other ideas in a future blog. This was a mix of ideas from a previous painting called 'Dance' about balancing good and evil which like this had 'moving' parts and played with the way colour works.
At its heart is a simple and very complex philosophical idea from Heraclitus that you 'can't step into the same river twice' because both you and the river are always changing. I wanted to challenge the static capture that a representation of a river is in a 2D painting and I wanted to make something that demanded that the viewer engage with the painting differently by giving it time.