Title: Whispering River
Artist: Tanya Hayes Lee
Medium & Materials: Oil on cradled wood panel
Dimensions: 10" × 10"
Whispering River is an intimate, beautifully serene square landscape that captures the stillness of an open horizon dissolving into mist. The work explores a quiet shoreline transition, where cool periwinkle blues, muted violets, and deep charcoal earth tones overlap to suggest slow, meditative water movement along a coastal ridge.
Gallery Description
In Whispering River, Tanya Hayes Lee presents a quiet, atmospheric landscape study on an intimate 10" × 10" cradled wood panel. The composition uses a low-horizon layout, giving nearly two-thirds of the square surface to an expansive upper atmosphere. Soft, scumbled washes of pale periwinkle and hazy slate blue blend into a shimmering silver-white fog at the upper right, creating a weightless field of light suspended above the earth.
The lower third transforms this cool light into a textured, rhythmic landscape. Dark, low-lying coastal ridges or banks are built from loose gestural passages of charcoal black and deep forest green. Across these rocky planes, soft ribbons of muted lavender and violet suggest a slow-moving, shallow river channel reflecting the sky. Several blocky vertical forms rise from the ridge line, combining architectural and geological references with fine, scratch-like calligraphic detail. Lee’s refined balance of deep shadow and ethereal sky gives this compact work a profound sense of isolation, stillness, and natural wonder.
Style & Composition
- Artistic style: Abstract Impressionism with a lyrical Tonalist sensibility.
- Composition: A low-horizon square layout that prioritizes a vast misty sky over overlapping horizontal land planes, balanced by stylized vertical masses along the ridge line.
- Focal point: The soft glowing purple water channel as it cuts horizontally across the dark, high-contrast foreground ridges.
- Color palette: A soothing cool-toned range of pale periwinkle blues, soft lavenders, and misty slate grays, anchored by deep charcoal black and dark olive green.
- Lighting and atmosphere: Soft, heavily diffused overcast light or low coastal fog, eliminating harsh shadows to create a tranquil, airy wilderness mood.
Application & Technique
- Brushwork and mark-making: Loose, painterly, and varied, combining soft scumbling and dry brushing for the airy sky with thicker structural blocks and fine calligraphic scratching that carves detail into the dark forms.
- Layering and depth: Strong atmospheric perspective creates depth, with dark, high-contrast foreground shapes anchoring the view while the low-contrast blue-gray sky recedes into the distance.
- Materials and tools: Heavy-body oil paint on a rigid cradled wood panel, using fine detail liners with soft blending tools to preserve clean graphic linework alongside smooth atmospheric transitions.
Inventory Status: Available for purchase online or in the gallery.
Shipping / Pickup: Shipping is available, with items securely packaged in professional archival materials, insured, and shipped globally; complimentary local pickup is also available at our 23 North Main Street gallery.
