Charleston, SC MEGAN ALINE & BRETT SCHEIFFLEE Many Long Walks
Landscape artists often roam the land in search of their next great painting. The scene that strikes them often happens at random moments, when the light hits just right. In the upcoming exhibition Many Long Walks at Robert Lange Studios in Charleston, South Carolina, Megan Aline and Brett Scheifflee share their outdoor adventures in a number of new paintings. Both artists turn to the quieter, contemplative aspects of nature where the soft atmosphere takes center stage.
“I am drawn to the outdoors in a barefoot
kind of way; I think I need to be physically connected to the earth to feel normal,” says Aline. “As I paint and appreciate a tiny leaf on a tree, I feel connected to it as if I’m honoring it by noticing it. This connection fulfills something, perhaps a story or a journal of what I am seeing. As I document the natural world in paint, I relive the adventure I experienced to discover it, and then I get to share this story with the people who see my work. It’s very fulfilling.”
Among Aline’s newest paintings is Look Inside, which depicts a landscape inside the silhouette of a figure. “The result,” she says, “is something that is still a landscape but I have been describing them as inner landscapes. They show the stories I have held onto inside myself, the quiet places I can’t forget or let go of, that I carry around.”
Scheifflee’s paintings are often panoramic scenes that, he says, “give the viewer’s eye a distance to traverse and little details to take in along the way, almost as if you are in the scene and are
thinking of what lies ahead, or where you will go next.” His pieces also provide a sense of being in the wilderness, as they are not just open lands but rather images that show the fog or approaching storms, building a tension and ambiguous narrative. “Like being out in the world,” he adds, “you never really know what you will see or find and that in part keeps you wanting to go back.”
His painting Blue Velvet Night of downtown Charleston shows the haze and humidity found in the Lowcountry. Schiefflee elaborates, “It’s a scene that’s one part comforting and one part mysterious, you kind of want to sit down on a park bench and listen to the peepers, but an older voice from your childhood reminds you that you can’t be sure of what might emerge from the dark.”
Many Long Walks will be on view July 5 to 26, with a reception opening night from 5 to 8 p.m.