Judy Gohringer
Paths & Portages
So many of us have a special place of refuge or beauty and peace that we retreat to, if not in real time then in memories and dreams.
I was a lucky kid whose parents who took us canoe camping into the wilds of Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada. My parents weren’t athletic, outdoors people but rather they were curious about the geography and the history of places, as am I. Years later I took my own kids on canoe camping trips into Algonquin. These trips involved lots of hiking, paddling, looking for paths and portages. There were glorious Ontario summer days in canoes as well as those long, tired days with storms, swells, and wind. We had cold nights, wet socks, thirst and, of course, bug bites but the natural beauty of each lake and river and the adventure of the next portage and camping site outweighed the discomfort. Here are some of my memories made visual, each painting has a story.
There is a universal attraction to the landscape. We often look at landscapes trying to find one that looks like what we know or have experienced: the landscape of our childhood, the landscape of a favorite vacation. We take photographs to capture and save those landscapes and those memories. I wanted to go beyond the photograph in hopes that others see the appreciation I had for what I continually go back to: the rocks and land, the trees, the water and the sky.
