Cynthia Ruse

pages from the book of light

2019

Artist Comments
"Part of the meditation process is to allow your mind to clear, follow a journey, and allow thoughts to pass through," says artist Candice Eisenfeld. "The vertical, thin section in the middle is an abstracted version of the landscape, it is varnished while the other parts have no gloss. This process was done to illustrate how our perceptions of the world and experiences can change, and how we can recognize these lenses to achieve clarity. The left side depicts peaceful, floating, abstracted thoughts."

About the Artist
As an American exploring issues of identity, artist Candice Eisenfeld paints through the lens of the first American art movement, the Hudson River School. Rather than depicting a specific locale, Candice’s artwork evokes a sense of place. These "inner landscapes" are invented, and often reference photographs taken during travels in southern Appalachia and the Blue Ridge and Smokey Mountains. Whether real or imagined, her paintings are influenced by the Dutch Masters, Tonalists, and Chinese painting. Produced on a single wooden panel, the ethereal landscapes are often joined with segments of aqueous color fields which act as commentary for the landscapes, like the chorus in a Greek play. The crisp, hard edges separating the landscapes from the color fields command a sense of order in an otherwise fluid and painterly surface. With two or three sections of the panel competing for attention, the painting creates multiple focal points. Candice's art has been displayed in embassies in Namibia and Belarus, held in the collections of Norwest Bank and Northwest...