In 2010 I returned to painting full time after a fourteen year commitment to ecoart and environmental art projects. My intention from 1996 to 2010 was to merge my activism and my art in response to critical local landscape issues i.e., wetlands degradation and habitat loss, primarily through rehabilitation, community engagement and narrative art strategies in the New Jersey Meadowlands.
In a June 14, 2021 interview with Directors of the Teaneck Creek Conservancy I talk about this part of my work:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvVPkkdvFww
If you are interested in how artists might address our climate crisis please check it out.
The new studio work continues themes of earlier paintings: structure(s) in landscape, looking out from inside through windows and doors, the northeast coastal wetlands, rural artifacts are among some that I repeatedly - and frequently in series - return to. But the primary connections are the associations brought to me by space and light.
I work from direct observation of spatial situations that attract me formally and subconsciously. The poetry of place is of my own personal mythology, a longing for lost homes; a remembrance of water; of daydreaming through windows, of silence.
I look for a subject, occasionally making a pilgrimage, and often it’s just there, in front of me. Times of day, seasons, moods of weather: all are shifting, as does scale and texture; of supports and material; of past, present and future directions; of an unexpected dialog between works.
Current and upcoming group and solo exhibitions:
Longyear Gallery
Friday October 20 - Sunday November 19, 2023
RK Mills "50 Years of Prints and Works on Paper"
Opening reception: Saturday, October 21 from 3 - 6pm
Artist talk: 2pm, Saturday, November 11
785 Main Street
Margaretville, N.Y. 12455
Fall/Winter Hours: Friday - Sunday and holiday Mondays 11-4 PM
www.longyeargallery.org
Longyear Gallery
Monthly, rotating group exhibit
www.longyeargallery.org
For more images and videos of ecoart works:
ecoartweb.wixsite.com/ecoartnetwork
and
www.teaneckcreek.org/ecoart-gallery/
also
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1DwqyqZFVI
and
www.youtube.com/watch?v=515LKqXX0iM
and
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLQd3GyTIMk