A Sense of Place

A sense of place is our internal compass, our personal map -- made up of memories, sensory attributes of sight, sound, smell and touch, and being in the moment. It affects our responses and how we approach our work, family, friends and life. Whether I am walking on the beach below my home on the cliff, or working outside in my Zen gardens (which I have been doing a LOT lately), I am becoming more aware of my surroundings and the joy and peace it brings me.

"I do not understand how anyone can live without one small place of enchantment to turn to."
--- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Floods, 30"x45", acrylic

Erin McSavaney lives and works in Vancouver BC, Canada. His landscape paintings and architecture/buildings paintings are often quite large and always striking. His wonderful website can be found here.

"Human patterns of building, occupying, using, abandoning, and then often reclaiming. All have a marked affect on how structures-- and ultimately ourselves-- are perceived." Erin McSavaney

Sun Lights the Coastal Plains, pastel, 12"x18"

Kathleen Galligan is a Maine artist who works in a number of mediums. You can find her beautiful website here.

Emergence, oil, 10"x10"

"The sound of the sea, the curve of a horizon, wind in leaves, the cry of a bird leave manifold impressions in us. And suddenly, without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills
from us and finds expression in musical language... I want to sing my interior landscape with the simple artlessness of a child." -- Claude Debussy

Index No. 955, encaustic and charcoal on panel, 60"x50"

Peter Roux is a mixed media artist who often uses encaustic with oil and/or charcoal and works quite large. He often incorporates text into his works and you can find his wonderful website here.

"The development of space in a painting sets up distances: between viewer and subject, and between formal elements and points of information within a subject." -- Peter Roux

(The above is titled: Notes on Italy: Venice text No. 6, 50"x108", oil and encaustic)

Susan Loeb is an artist from New Orleans. These two works are black and white watercolors.
You can find her beautiful website here.
"Every one seeks a sense of place, whether it is his or her own back yard or country. Place reinforces one's sense of self, one's true identity." Susan Loeb

"I combine observation, memory, and the presence of the subject in strongly stated images that embody my emotional response to New Orleans, the place I call home." -- Susan Loeb

Tim O'Kane is an artist who works in both fine art paintings and in fine art photography. You can find his wonderful work and the complete poem (below) at his website here.
(The above painting is titled 2 Whales and is watercolor on paper.)

PEBBLE BEACH, watercolor on paper

...The painter loved the world
with its conflicts of light and shadow,
desolation and beauty.
His was just one intention in a troubled world
the intimacy growing like ivy
around the obstacles of doubt,
as he watched
the carving continue on the monument of faces
birds filling and emptying the promontory of sky,
the tenuous construction on networks of bridges
from soul to soul, dream to dream, day to day.
---Tim O'Kane, Signature, 2008, excerpt