Pilgrims at the Creek

“When I’m painting I like to imagine that what I’m seeing are masses of shapes and lines. The items in the visual world lose their names.” From her plein-air perch at a parking garage near Elmwood Park, Laura Vahlberg evokes Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’s focus on “seeing,” a mode of pure reception without bias or preconceived notion.
“I saw the line of the sky against the mountains as a particular set of curves. I looked for a pattern in the overcast sky and the shadows beneath the clouds.” Searching for contrasting and reflected elements amid the shapes she observes, “the world feels like a mirror where everything lives in an envelope of air that has a particular color and mood.”