Karen Luke Fildes, Artist

Interplay: A Tale of Two Watersheds

Refuge - Nisqually Delta, Sold

Karen has finished fifty studies for “Interplay” and will be offering a show at Walking on Water Gallery on October 30th. Many of the paintings have already sold but the remaining urban treasures will be available until October 30th. Unsold pieces will be archived on November 1.

Interplay: A Tale of Two Watersheds is a collection of 50 original paintings captured on location at two watersheds - one highly urbanized and the other primarily wild - by celebrated landscape artist Karen Luke Fildes. The paintings’ themes, revealing the interplay of earth, water and sky, are interpreted by award-winning nature writer David George Gordon.Interplay will explore the multitude of forces, both natural and human-caused, at work within the two watersheds. The Nisqually Watershed is a 722 square mile patchwork of glacier, farms, forests and protected wilderness areas midway between Tacoma and Olympia, and the Thornton Creek Watershed is an 11.6 square mile conglomerate of neighborhoods, commercial districts and pocket parks - the largest such drainage within the Seattle city limits.

Salmon Sky Sold

“The two watersheds make excellent examples for comparison and contrast,” says nature writer David George Gordon. “In the Nisqually Watershed, the narrative thread follows the Nisqually River, which originates atop Mount Rainier and empties at the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge in Puget Sound.”

On Duckweed - in the Wildlife Refuge Sold

“On the other hand,” Karen Luke Fildes says, “Thornton Creek is an expressive urban waterway, with its headwaters in a concrete parking lot near the Northgate shopping mall and its terminus at a city park on the shores of Lake Washington. There has been a lot of passion put in to the keeping of these two systems. Art is a proven medium that allows the human soul to receive heightened awareness where data too often fails to inspire.”

Thornton Creek Channel Sold

Interplay will examine the contour of change and the ever-shifting patterns of rain, snow, sunshine and wind that influence the flow of water across the land - of the perpetual give-and-take between economic growth and environmental protection, shifting demographics and historic preservation.

There will be a show at Walking on Water Gallery and Studios on October 30 from 5 to 9 pm to celebrate the Urban Watershed and the paintings that have been created on this journey.

http://walkingonwaterfremont.com