Gage Opdenbrouw

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

As I returned to Oakland, by driving 4000 miles from Pennsylvania, across the southern route, in later February of 2020, I planned to do two things—get ready to teach several travel workshops, and pack up my studio in oakland so I could move east in the fall.  I was in Amarillo Texas when I got read the article about the pandemic in the NYT—I started to get the sinking feeling, like a lurch, that w=the year was going to be very different from what I envisioned.  It was a year of constant scramble, emergency moves, an orange sky, thick smoke and crazy heat, strange light and shifting sands.  What I’m saying is that it wasn’t a year for considered reflection, or not in the regular way of keeping a sketchbook.  But I did return to certain motifs close at hand from my day to day surroundings as often as circumstances would permit, here are some of those results—oil on panel, and paper, and ink wash and pencil on paper.  Most of these are from Summer through Fall of 2020, an attempt to find respite, quiet, and a meditative moment, maybe even beauty, in turbulent times.