A Perfect, Unattainable Romance

Frozen Falls, 2014, acrylic and oil on panel, 16” x 16”.

Brooklyn artist Rebecca Bird’s paintings capture the arrested motion of Niagara Falls with poise, mystery, and careful attention.

South, 2015, acrylic and oil on panel, 30” x 40”.
"What I realized while working with this imagery was, I’d always taken for granted Niagara Falls as a symbol of the perfect unattainable romance, or this death-defying feat of going over the falls as a stunt. It became a window into the kinds of expectations you have for your life when you are a child—the things you think you’re supposed to do, or the dangers you expect you may face. Those two ideas about Niagara Falls were ideas about growing up, that things could go perfectly and correctly, or somehow go terrifying wrong. And neither of them in retrospect were realistic expectations, they were old ideas that were still around, leftover from the last century but still present enough in the culture to be familiar to the average person. I think I saw these two images in Bugs Bunny cartoons, although I can’t find them on YouTube now."
Fold Niagara, 2014, watercolor on paper, 41” x 30”.


More: The Morning News

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