River Paintings

oil painting fast flowing river water islands winter alla prima plein air

I was born in a country of brooks and rivers, in a corner of Champagne, called le Vallage for the great number of its valleys. The most beautiful of its places for me was the hollow of a valley by the side of fresh water, in the shade of willows…

My pleasure still is to follow the stream, to walk along its banks in the right direction, in the direction of the flowing water, the water that leads life towards the next village…

But our native country is less an expanse of territory than a substance; it’s a rock or a soil or an aridity or a water or a light. It’s the place where our dreams materialize; it’s through that place that our dreams take on their proper form….Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green. I can’t sit beside a brook without falling into a deep reverie, without seeing once again my happiness….The stream doesn’t have to be ours; the water doesn’t have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring.

L’Eau et les Rêves. Essai sur l’imagination de la matière. Gaston Bachelard.