“Although my work addresses what is perceived visually, the aim is to embrace the seen and the unseen. The flat surface of a painting can become a portal that transports the viewer to the space the artist is experiencing, remembering, or imagining at the time of the creating…By limiting the amount of visual information given to the viewer, the viewer subconsciously ‘fills in the blanks’ and experiences the actual space themselves, transcending traditional perceptions of mono-chronic time, of ‘here’ and ‘there.’ My process of painting is simple: seeing and responding. What I see is exhilarating…vast space, a robust and wondrously alive landscape that is simultaneously as delicate and fragile as each spring’s new leaf. The transience of this physical environment becomes a mirror for an inner reality, a metaphor for the awareness of human mortality coexisting with the exuberance of life.”
Chrys Riviere-Blalock studied at Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina; Parsons School of Design, New York; and Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina. She served as an art educator for over twenty-five years, an exhibition juror, and a visiting artist lecturer at colleges in North and South Carolina. Riviere-Blalock is a two-time recipient of the North Carolina Regional Artist Project Grant from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Arts and Science Council. Her work was selected for a solo exhibit on view at the Hearst Tower Plaza during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, and has been shown at Artists Space and the Prince Street Gallery in New York, among others.
