Marilyn Prescott

My explorations along the Fox River in NE Wisconsin provide the inspiration for these most recent paintings. In these, composed largely of smooth atmospheric backgrounds layered with randomly textured collage elements, I try to convey my own experience of time. A Buddhist would say that time does not exist; that every moment that has ever existed exists still…now. I am in love with this idea. As humans, we want things made concrete, once and for all. When, as it turns out, everything is wildly dynamic, composed of many instances coming together for an instant. And then reconfiguring in new ways. In just this way, I attempt to picture life along the Fox River.

I collect and internalize visual memories during my long, solitary walks. Later, in the studio, I recontextualize the colors, rhythms, patterns, shadows, textures to make a concrete artifact of the earlier experience. The atmospheric passages provide context, while the collage accents allow the collapse of time and invite my viewer to walk along with me, getting glimpses of water, rocks, twigs, leaves, mud, snow, branches, ice, all reduced to line, texture, color, pattern. I try to capture the push pull of presence and absence, space and surface, material vs. mental. The paintings are fractured glimpses seen through the prism of time, thus giving human memory and consciousness an equal role in the act of creation.