Wood + Water
Original artwork by Toni Gallo
This contemporary landscape painting is created on stretched canvas with acrylic + colored pencil, measuring 60x48" completed in 2023.
 
The painting is inspired by the impressive mystical experiences that nature hands out in the most exquisite and normal ways. The wood and water patterns perform together sending the transmission that all things are connected and reflect one another and to bask in this truth brings a feeling of harmonious, peaceful integration. Making an effort to spend time outdoors will gift you some of the most profound moments of living.
 
This painting was part of a solo exhibition in Hopkins, MN during the summer of 2023. Below is the artist statement.
 
Continuous Thread / Unraveling Insight
 
These paintings are a peace break, displaying the condition of completeness through the strenth of suggestion. They make sense without thought, of our spiritual nature through creative practice.
 
The experience of presence is so exquisite and then we forget. Our intuitive eye becomes obstructed. Attachment to thought gets in the way of the natural condition of completeness. Convinced in the need to make greater sense of things, we become caved in by the incessant hoarding of attachments. It seems we are fearful of existence being enough; in constant search for meaning outside ourselves.
 
Nature provides us with the spiritual condition of existence. There is no denying nature and its power to pull us toward self and peace. The paintings offer an assembly of energy displaying the exquisite design of existence, the unobstructed force of nature, through the strength in suggestion. And that is enough, its appearance, mystical.
 
This series expresses my interest in mysticism, experiencing spirit through meditation practices and creating a transmission. It's a comforting lens for the contemplation of existence. The process of painting grants access to creativity; the matter for self-study. The discovery of a turn in the path to a light space by way of an unadulterated, internal knowledge. By opening to the pulse of creativity, I am reminded of what I know.
 
The nature in life glimpsed in patterns.
 
It's a break.
 
A Peace Break
the most calm and steady
unobstructed
retires from adding through thought