—  Darlene Lobos  —

Imagine yourself walking along a path. Perhaps it is near the river, in the mountains or on a wooded hillside. The place seems strangely familiar and yet you don’t believe you’ve come this way before. You pause and glance around. You are suddenly, keenly aware of the color, the beauty and the complexity of the place. You feel the history of the land and the mystery that enshrouds it. You inhale the vista through your eyes and it becomes part of you and you, part of it.

This is the kind of experience I have that marks the beginning of my painting process. In the studio I create paintings by weaving together memories of the landscape and my response to it with textures, impasto and thin glazes of oil paint. I work intuitively until I feel I have created a sense of place which is true in beauty and mystery. By evoking this sense of place, a new place manifests in the painting. It is a place of repose, contemplation and meditation. In the words of Henry David Thoreau: “It is in vain to dream of a wilderness distant from ourselves.”