Seeing Through - for viola and piano. Commissioned by Les Ecoles d'Art Américaines de Fontainebleau and premiered in July 2023 by Fanny Bracco (piano) and Corley Friesen-Johnson (viola).
Seeing through is a continuation of my recent work that has drawn inspiration from the work of abstract expressionist painter, Norman Lewis. While doing research on Lewis, I came across his work Reflected Moon, on a gallery’s website. This painting uses a style that is characteristic of much of Lewis’ work, where there are seemingly straight lines and pointed edges that are blurred to give a hazy shadow—almost as if I am looking at clear lines without my glasses. However, this painting not only has these entrancing lines and shadows where I am drawn into focus but am constantly eluded, but also features an orb-like shape in the center of the painting, perhaps the moon as the title describes. That this is the only shape that has a clear definition immediately draws me into the center of the painting and gives the sensation that the other hazier shapes are emanating outwards from it. My overall experience of this painting is one of fluid and buoyant motion, of a luminous world where we are constantly moving but simultaneously frozen in the middle with the central orb. Seeing through is an indirect representation of my experience of this painting where there are active textures of single line that grow into holistic harmonies, a serene section of steady 8th notes colored by the viola that feels both suspended and cascading, and all centers to one moment in the middle of the piece where the piano plays stopped notes in the piano colored by viola harmonics.