: Northern Light

By Edward Ravine 

Artist’s Statement

I paint watercolors and the reflection of light.  The painting titled “Northern Light” is of a lake in Hiawatha National Forest in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The light is fading as the sun sets after a day of fishing last May. Other locations in the show include the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, the Nooksack River of Deming, Washington, and the Galien River here in southwest Michigan. These paintings say more about me than what I can say here in an artist’s statement.

I am a psychotherapist by trade with a fifty year history.

I have served the general population of my generation and specialized in veteran’s issues and other serious challenges to the human condition.  When I have needed my own healing, I have turned to wild places to hike and paint. For the last 20 years this has included southwest Michigan. These 8 paintings as a group capture the moments in my life in which I can hear my own inner voice.  The quiet voice found in wild places can create the possibility that we can be “clear” how little we know and “open” to feelings of kindness and compassion. As the poet Wallace Stevens said, “Sometimes the truth depends on a walk around the lake.”  Sometimes healing depends on that too.

Edward Ravine

Union Pier, Michigan and Evanston, Illinois