Water & Stone, 17 works at Hotel Murano
As the Artist in Residence at the Hotel Murano I am privileged to be asked to fill the beautiful gallery space found on the hotel's 4th floor. Well fill it I did! With 17 pieces of new work with the title Water & Stone, an exploration of time, texture and imperfect perfection. Why Water & Stone? Well, I wrote a little bit about that.
Artist’s statement
“Bringing the wilderness home with me” is the simplest way to describe what I was hoping to do when I began a deep dive into art inspired by nature. It’s always felt deflating to me to leave a wilderness adventure in the mountains to return to the city in the valley. I wanted to be able to render in paint those details in nature that have such a powerful effect on me. This could occasionally mean painting a picture of a majestic mountain vista. For me it is more often something subtler and intimate such as dappled sunlight under a gnarled tree or a water strider skimming along the calm surface of a pool of water next to a raging river. Water and stone are subjects that appear repeatedly in my work. I am fascinated by the texture of stone and the complexity of water. These elements are so different and yet share a lifelong relationship that creates similarities in them visually. Stone pushes water, creating currents, ripples and rapids. Water, working its slow unrelenting erosion and accretion, forms channels and smooths edges in the rock. I have found that water and stone can sometimes appear alike. At first it was surprising when this would happen, but now I seek it out. This can be seen in the paintings the Immortal and the Migrants. But the relationship between the two elements, and my relationship with them, goes beyond the visual.
To me water and stone represent different ways of thinking about time. Water is in constant motion, ever changing, transparent and reflective, never appearing exactly the same. Water is on a timeline moving quickly. But in a way this is an illusion. The river, now made up of different water than a moment ago, is still the same river. Stone appears unchanging and constant, opaque and dense. It is on a timeline moving slowly. This, too though, is a type of illusion. The stone is changing, constantly, but too slowly for us to be a witness to. I, as the observer, am a third timeline. I will set the scene. A wilderness scene with a mountain river cutting through a canyon. A canyon made by the river over millions of years. I enter as a streak of light, a blur, moving even faster through time than the water. Then, something changes. I begin to hear the water and the wind. I begin to smell the pine trees warming in the sun and the grasses drying out along the river bank. I begin to see the river with its shallows and depths. The reflection of sky and canyon and the river bed warped and wriggling seen through the clear water. My timeline has changed. I’m now on river time. I’m still moving quickly, but slowly enough that I am really sensing my environment. I am present, here and now. Then it changes again. I feel the hardness of the stone on which I sit. I realize that it is a boulder and it’s gigantic. It sits deep in the earth now, but once was part of the canyon wall hundreds of feet above. Many of the smaller stones around me are its children. Born, perhaps, when the boulder first crashed to earth millennia ago. It has a story. A past that my imagination tries to capture but succeeds only in obscure shadow and feeling. I have no actual experience to be able to relate to such a history. I imagine that I am a stone, high up on a cliff face, looking far down upon a small ribbon of river that one day I will roll down to meet. But for now, I am still. Perfectly still and everything around me is a blur. Seasons, floods and drought come and go. I am now on stone time. I am here and now. But there is no longer an I. There is only what is.
This sense of time, of changing perception, is what I wish to capture in paint. This is why water and stone are important in my work.
Here's a short tour through Hotel Murano, beautiful arts focused hotel in Tacoma, Washington, which shows the interesting walk up to the 4th floor gallery where you'll find Water & Stone.
Join me April 25th, 2026 between 2-5p for the opening of this exhibit and check back for events continuing through the year!
~Henry
