For Christine Ries, color is everything. In Colorscapes, on display this June at BAYarts, Ries will be showcasing her long study of the colors that build her world.

Does she have a favorite color? As expected, such a question is impossible to answer. Still, she concedes, “I think I’ve mastered green.” Ries elaborates, “If you look at my palette, you will see that I lay out about a dozen colors to make green leaves. Green allows me to play with the temperature of the painting as the color travels from hot to cold.”

Her style has a specific approach and aesthetic, honed in 2007 when she began to explore gouache paints. “It transformed the way I apply paint to canvas, laying clean color next to clean color with little or no blending. These series of marks and colorful masses are what define my work and allow me to push a representational subject matter into abstraction.”

Emotional color drives Ries’ now intuitive process. She says that a piece titled A Break in the Clouds is especially notable for her as it conveys a strong emotion. “I painted this as I was going through my divorce. The composition seems a bit off-balance as bright sunflowers are straining toward the edges of the canvas. The flowers are bright and alive and strong. The background is handled with more restraint with intentional influences of the Bloomsbury Group and the dreaminess that comes with the idea of creatives living and working together.”

Colorscapes runs from June 12 through July 3.

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