Statement
In this work I reflect on the encounter between water and earth: the lakeshore, the river bank, the ocean beach. This meeting place is a boundary in the natural world where elements react, oppose and meld.
The paintings are landscapes focused on the edge where land and water meet, without sky or trees, seen from above. In the ceramic pieces, I use colorants in the clay or glaze overlays to suggest the same meeting of earth and water in three dimensions.
Place has been an important part of my work. I have painted in many varied landscapes, often abstracting the natural forms from sites to evoke the essence of a location. In "Water's Edge," I am presenting the abstracted landscape in paint and clay as a transitional space, a place where land and water share an edge in a transient moment that is always evolving.
There is beauty and comfort in the water's edge — as well as a suggestion of its precarious state. I simplify landscape detail but use many layers of color, value changes and contrast to imply a landscape subject to immediate and long-term transformation.
—Elizabeth Strasser