Marsh Light
Wrenhaven Arts Center · River and marsh · 2024- Medium
- Oil, broken color
- Support
- Linen and oak panel
- Sizes
- 40 × 70 cm to 70 × 110 cm
- Painted
- September and October 2024
- Shown at
- Wrenhaven Arts Center
- Available
- Sold out, prints of Golden Reeds
For six weeks every fall the marsh behind the town turns red, then gold, then brown. I painted it every dry day.
The marsh is a twenty minute walk from the studio, past the boatyard and over the old sea wall. Most people walk past it to get to the beach.
I painted standing in rubber boots, on a light easel I could carry with one hand. Marsh grass is impossible to draw, so I stopped drawing it and painted the color in short, broken strokes.
The Path at Dusk is the only painting from the wood at the edge of the marsh. The light came through the trees like a stove door left open.
Early September. The reeds catch the light first, the grass a week later.
A windless morning and a pool so still it held the whole sky.
The last week, when the grass turns the color of rust.
Plates 04 Marsh Light · 2024
Broken color: cadmium red light and viridian laid side by side and never mixed. Up close it is noise. From across the room it is grass in the evening.
- Easel
- Aluminum field easel
- Strokes
- Short, broken, unblended
“She made us look at the marsh again. Half the town went out there after the show.”
Four canvases from the studio wall.
Marsh Light · Oil on linen · 2024-
01 Golden Reeds -
02 Marsh Pool, October -
03 Red Marsh -
04 The Path at Dusk
One painter, one studio, marsh light.
Full credits
Behind the series
- Painted by
- Odile Marrow
- Stretchers
- Teo Lindqvist
- Hanging
- Wrenhaven Arts Center team
- Photography of the works
- Mira Castell
- Shown by
- Wrenhaven Arts Center
And a pair of boots that never dried out.