Rainbow Dance

Kim Roberts’ "Rainbow Dance" uses abstract gestural brushstrokes to convey the stark arid beauty of a desert landscape. The sweeping and rich swaths of red and orange oil paint create a sense of topography, sun-burnt earth, and the Mars-like landscapes found in the American southwest. The delicately painted blue sky and wispy clouds pull the painting out of abstraction and into figuration. Without the addition of this heavenly ether presiding over the scene, the composition would be unmoored from the physical world and the mountains would collapse into the canvas unnoticed. The painting moves from abstraction to figuration as our eyes move from the bottom of the canvas to the top. An experience common in our everyday lives as something seen out of place and uncontextualized by its surroundings often appears abstract and otherworldly (one might even say painterly).