Out There

Artist: Deanna Schuerbeke

Format: Acrylic on Canvas (unstretched — can be stretched to order)

Dimensions: 48" × 48"

Description:
"I often have this feeling that something big is coming," Deanna Schuerbeke says, "but when, and what?" She describes the storm-dark purples and blacks as excitement rather than dread, the orange breaking along the horizon as the signal that whatever is approaching will not be subtle. Out There is the moment just before. The held breath. The particular quality of air when the atmosphere is reorganizing itself around something enormous.

The painting has depth — real, built-up, layered depth — and you feel it immediately. Dark passages of black and purple sit beneath warm washes of rust and brown that bleed into them like wet into wet, the colors not so much layered as interpenetrated, the way rain already in the air changes the color of everything before it arrives. Linear marks whip across the upper register — not anchoring the composition but moving through it, insinuating wind, the sense of being surrounded by the storm rather than watching it from a safe distance. Then the eye catches the yellow-green passages at the upper right and something clicks into place: that specific color the sky turns when storm clouds filter the light, the color that means lightning before lightning comes. The barometer is dropping. You can feel it.

A single vertical line of pure gold descends the right edge of the canvas — unhurried, deliberate, the one still note in a painting otherwise entirely in motion. It is the eye of what is coming. Out There does not resolve, because the storm hasn't broken yet. You cannot look away. You might miss the show.

Want to learn more? 

Read Deanna's Introduction Blog Page
Check out her Artist Bio & Statement

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