Saundra McPherson

My work is about place, drawing on relationships with urban and rural wild places. I reference physical transformation in natural phenomena, and the human-nature interface. Working with the physicality and immediacy of materials, my studio practice parallels forces inherent in nature: applying and manipulating semi-transparent layers. Color-saturated surfaces are built over time. The Edge series suggests the boundary where land or water meets sky, an in-between zone of light and form. They imagine the geological and biological processes underlying and shaping the landscape over millennia and taking place beneath our feet - from the evolution of soil and the organisms that maintain it, to deposition, erosion, faulting and uplift creating land forms. The work is transforming in response to the high desert: the plants, soil and stone of the Jemez and Sangre de Cristo mountains, the shifting Rio Grande Rift, ever changing skies, fierce light and seasonal palette, and the undulating surface of adobe, drystone walls and acequia - our own imprint on the land. As a color field painter, juxtaposing color is my language; the Boxed:Shift series expands and refines this color interaction, the geometric forms defining both object & negative space interchangeably.