Inside the Studio: The Passage Collection

Passage is my series about urban figures in motion: streets, light, weather, and the ordinary moments that build up over the course of a day without anyone noticing them happen. Most of the figures in these paintings have their backs to the viewer. That's intentional. I want the person walking through the frame to feel less like a specific individual and more like an experience you can step into yourself.

Soft Passage follows a small procession of people walking away from the viewer along a snow-covered path. Snow settles over the benches and the bare trees, muting everything into stillness, while a single lit lamp glows warm against the cold blues and grays of the foreground. As the figures move forward, the palette shifts toward the pale yellow light of a setting sun ahead of them. Their shadows stretch back toward the viewer the whole time, so even as they walk on, something of where they've been stays visible on the ground behind them.

The Third Presence takes a similar idea and narrows it down to two people. A man and a woman walk hand in hand beneath a bridge, moving toward a light-filled space ahead. I left their faces turned away and their identities open on purpose, so the certainty in their joined hands carries the painting, along with the small gesture of the woman holding her hat against the wind..

Across the Passage series, I keep returning to the same question. What does it look like when nothing dramatic is happening, and someone is simply walking, waiting, or moving through a place on their way somewhere else? The paintings in this collection, including The Long Way Home, After the First Rain, Still Passage, Where the Day Lingers, and Day Turning, all circle that same quiet territory.

Shana