ARTIST STATEMENT
I first walked off into the woods at age 3, accompanied by my brother, age 5. I had the opportunity to do this through my twelfth year, usually alone, sometimes getting quite lost, mostly not. My present series is in honor of those experiences. I’ve read that the word “panic” comes from the feeling we have when we enter the woods and feel overwhelmed by a powerful presence (the god Pan). While I don’t panic in the modern or classical sense while I am in the woods, I do feel a hair-raising, super aliveness in the environment. I love this experience. As a child, I felt the woods was both a different world, and at the same time I belonged in it like a kind of woodland creature. Any small stand of woodland will work, whatever we have left that is available to our life, can be exciting if we see it and respond to its energy. Most of my subject matter is in walking distance of my house. My approach to the paintings is just to do whatever I can to bring this experience to the viewer.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I have lived in Geneva in Upstate New York since 1981. For many of those years, with my academic husband and three daughters, I spent terms and various years in other cities and abroad, mostly in the UK. My background includes being a Modern Dancer and an assistant editor in a publishing house. I have been making sculpture or painting for about 40 years. My work includes historical bronze figures, satirical businessmen figures, faux ancient technology sculpture, portraits, installation, theater set design, landscapes, tablescapes, Through Two Inches of Seneca Lake, Woods and Paths.
© Cherry Rahn