What Remains
Terri Riendeau
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 18 | 3-5pm
I suffered a serious concussion in the spring of 2017. Alice fell down a rabbit hole; I just fell on the floor. The doctors forbade reading, screens of any sort, and complex thinking (really). I wondered if I might go bonkers – and then I wondered if that was complex thinking. A friend suggested maybe I could paint. It fit with something I had been feeling, so I got an easel, a big pad of drawing paper, and a starter set of acrylic paint tubes. The progress of my daily paintings was like a slow motion MRI of my improving brain. Although I’d long been engaged with art, I had never painted before and my mental faculties were pretty compromised. The early pieces were simple strokes of color.
As soon as I had the stamina, I moved from the easel to taping 3’ by 5’ pieces of paper to the wall, where I could make big, gestural brush strokes. I continued taping paper and canvas to the wall. To save on tape, I would reuse the strips for the next canvas. At some point I started noticing the mix of paint on the wide tape I was reusing and the What Remains series began.
