Cheryl Kline

A Sky...

In 1913 when Gertrude Stein wrote those famous words "A rose is a rose is a rose" many were struck at the profound simplicity of the statement and yet it is almost an oxymoron to put "profound" and "simple" in the same statement.

Yet some people were untouched by her words. 

Gertrude Stein's repetitive language can be said to refer to the changing quality of language in time and history. She herself said to an audience at Oxford University that the statement referred to the fact that when the Romantics used the word "rose" it had a direct relationship to an actual rose. For later periods in literature this would no longer be true. The eras following romanticism, notably the modern era, use the word rose to refer to the actual rose, yet they also imply, through the use of the word, the archetypical elements of the romantic era. 

My obsession with the sky; in all its glory, turbulent yet graceful, that moment when the sun is hiding behind a cloud, or the magical hour when daytime has come to an end...is not about simply a sunset. Yet, the simplicity of what is above our heads is so profound to me that words could never explain my feelings: A complicated mesh of emotion and spirituality: what is God? who is She? why am I here? And hey! all of you who are so wrapped up in things that in the big picture become unimportant... look up!

I suppose to be considered a "Great artist involved in a contemporary genre" it usually must involve the artist painting their pain or deconstructing reality. And while I see nothing wrong with that, my personal preference is to paint my passion. If I can describe with my brush, for someone else, the beauty I see, the beauty I seek, then for me, it is if I were reading to a blind person. And although I do not try to describe every detail that I see or imagine, the view is abstract just enough to allow you, the viewer, to bring your own unique experience to the untold story you see before you.