Molly Preston

My painting is a response to memory and color in the landscape and the architecture of a place.

The landscape of Summers in the San Juans: muted colors, the constantly agitated Salish sea, light at the end of the evergreen tunnel to the beach, crisp dry fields, driftwood thrown like pick-up sticks.

The landscape of Winters in the Coachella Valley of Southern California: blinding light, sharp edges, strong shadows, prickly plants, and folded barren hills trapping pink dawns, Mid-century architecture that is long and low punctured by window walls.

The landscape of Travel in Italy and France: painting Monet's lilies, a month in Rome looking at peeling walls, lines of vineyards in Tuscany.

Always with a sketchbook drawing in ink and watercolor, pocketing a memory to return to the studio. Feeding my restlessness. Move on.

My recent work has focused less on narrative, a challenge to make value, shape and color stand in for stories already told, pulling at the edges of reality to get to a deeper resonance of place.