Sacred Space 2022

Rose Freymuth-Frazier painted this landscape, called Sacred Space, with what looks like oil on canvas, and it feels to me like the process was all about layering and letting the colors mix and mingle. I'm really drawn to the way she's handled the paint—thick in some areas, especially up in that sky where you can see the strokes, but then almost like a wash down below in the water. It creates this incredible sense of depth, like you could just step right into that field. Look at the little cluster of trees over to the right, see how the light catches the edges? Those marks seem effortless, but they give the whole scene a kind of luminous quality. This painting reminds me a bit of those Tonalist landscapes from the late 1800's, like George Inness, where the mood is more important than the details. It's not about showing you exactly what's there, but about evoking a feeling, a memory. It's about ambiguity, leaving room for your own experience to fill in the gaps.