Bend in the River

Paintings from around the world were submitted to the very prestigious NorthWest Watercolor Societies exhibition titled “Waterworks Unchained.”  Christine Alfery’s “Bend In The River”  was accepted for this exhibition.   Aljoyua Mercer Island in Mercer Island, WA.  The judge for this exhibition was Birgit O’Conner.

Artist Statement:

As a little girl I can remember getting up early on a Saturday morning with my father and walking down to the river with him, the morning dew still on the grass, steam coming from my dad’s hot thermos cup of coffee.  I went racing ahead anxious to get in the boat and go exploring with my dad. There frequently would be fog rising from the river in the fall which was my favorite time to go exploring. I can remember finding milkweed pods opening and spreading their magic in the air, glorious colors, and mud.  Lots of mud along the shores. Rock River was never a pretty river but it was a river and I was with my dad and that made it all ok.  

I have to say living on a river, swimming in a river, playing in a river, catching fish, and waterbugs and frogs was just the beginning of my love of water and rivers.  As a young adult I began paddling rivers, loving their winding horseshoe turns, currents, and colors. I love paddling the clear waters of rivers in the Northwoods and Canada.  The more recent trip to the arctic and fishing the clear waters of the northwest territories I did some wonderful watercolor sketches of that trip and those rivers. My love of rivers and water has lasted a lifetime for me, starting with those adventures with my father many years ago.

With all these rich memories, it makes sense that I would start doing a series of rivers and waters – this is the first one several ideas I have for paintings. I wanted to catch the flow and current of the river, making the work fluid like my washes and the current. At the same time, I wanted to make the content also about connections our connections to the earth and the sky, the stars, the sun.  And I wanted to work with a new palette of colors. Needless to say, once the work on rivers and waters starts sparks begin to fly and it is hard to stop.