"River Reverie" — Gallery Wrapped
Madonna of the Freeway
Barbara Romain
Estate-Authorized
Gallery Wrapped Canvas
River Reverie began as a challenge. In 2016, Gallery 825 — the Los Angeles Art Association's gallery on La Cienega Boulevard — paired Barbara Romain with the artist Karen Clark for its "VS" series, in which two painters work from a single shared photograph and each paints her own impression, then hang the results side by side. Given the same image of a river running between wooded hills beneath a bridge, the two women arrived at opposite worlds: Clark's a hushed, near-nocturnal black-and-white; Barbara's — River Reverie — a burst of color, the water silvered, the hills electric green, the sky and mountains flushed with blue and violet. Barbara loved the gallery in part because it sat directly across from her late husband Chris Peditto's favorite Italian restaurant. The show hung the two canvases together as a study in how far apart two eyes can travel from the same starting point; a digital composite merging both responses, "Same River 2X=1," was produced through the Association.
Originally 24 × 30 inches, acrylic collage on canvas.
