PAT RYLL is this month’s featured artist at Benicia Plein Air Gallery. Her show, “Paintings on the Water’s Edge,” kicks off with a reception from 5-7 p.m. Saturday at the downtown gallery. Above, “Peeking Duck”; below, Ryll next to “Tahoe Blue.”
Keri Luiz/Staff (below)
By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor
Walking along its edge
I see posts, old pilings, parts of piers
Little houses on the water
History gathers here
— Lois Requist, “On the Water’s Edge”
THIS FALL, BENICIA’S POET LAUREATE LOIS REQUIST penned a six-stanza piece titled “On the Water’s Edge” as part of a collaboration with artist Dixie Mohan for the exhibit “WET” at Benicia Public Library.
The exhibit recently ended, but not before another artist, Pat Ryll, found inspiration in Requist’s verse while planning her own show at Benicia Plein Air Gallery.
“When I went to the WET show I realized that’s what I had been preparing for to be November’s featured artist,” she said. “Every one that I produced was on the water’s edge, a view while I was walking.”
Ryll said Requist’s poem is exactly how she feels about living in Benicia — “living here, walking here, and so forth,” she said.
Those unfamiliar with Requist’s poem can find a copy of it on the wall of the Plein Air Gallery with Ryll’s paintings. And Requist will be present at Saturday’s opening reception to read her poem.
Ryll, who also participated in the WET exhibit, said her recent focus on water fits well with her chosen medium: watercolor. It’s a form that has also given her an appreciation for the difficulty in controlling water, whether on canvas or in nature.
“RHAPSODY IN ROCKS” by Pat Ryll.
“An oil painter doesn’t have water to play with. I have to create some sort of balance between wet, dry, lots of pigment, and then the creativity comes when I let water do what it does best, and that is dance around on the page,” she said.
“Pigment and water, if you let it go, it creates interesting stuff.”
Her latest paintings are a mix of pieces painted from photographs and work done “en plein air.” “Tahoe Blue,” the central image in the exhibit, was painted on handmade watercolor paper, which offers a rich texture to work with.
“It’s easy to dry brush, because I’m just whisking with the brush over the top … and the paper has so much texture to it that you don’t have to paint white waves, it’s just taking your brush and whisking it over the top.
“Leaving white, for me, is what distinguishes between an oil painter, which is divine, and the watercolorist — it’s the white that the watercolorist has to leave that defines the dance between pigment and water,” she said.
“Peeking Duck,” which is actually a Canada goose, came from a familiar Benicia experience. “I was on the water’s edge out at the waterfront park playing with my grandchildren, and this guy was peeking at us,” she said.
“I love doing this, and I love art. The gallery for me and all my buddies here at the gallery are an incentive to keep moving.”
If You Go
A reception for Pat Ryll’s “Painting on the Water’s Edge” is Saturday, 5-7 p.m. at the Benicia Plein Air Gallery, 307 First St.
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Love your stuff, Pat! Wow! Great poem by Lois also! Go, Benicia! See you Saturday, 5-7! More, More!
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When I saw your painting in newsprint, I first thought it was an image of the Loch Ness monster. But, the title let me see the unusual angle you took of the duck.