The River Knows the Illusion of Light.

by Mya W.

The river doesn’t ask where

I’ve been.

It doesn’t count the mistakes

I’ve made or the people I’ve lost.

It simply keeps flowing, as if to

remind me that I can too.

Every path begins with

the illusion

that I know where it leads.

Yet somehow, the most beautiful

places are always the ones I was

never meant to find.

The trees guard the water, their

shadows stretching across its

surface like memories refusing

to disappear.

And still, the light continues.

It slips through every opening.

It settles upon every ripple.

It reaches places the darkness

believed would never be

touched again.

There is something comforting

to know that light does not fight

the shadows.

It simply exists beside them.

Perhaps that is what the river

has been trying to teach me

all along.

It was never meant to erase the

difficult parts of myself.

I was only meant to

keep moving,

until one quiet morning, I look

back and realize that even my

darkest reflections have been

carrying the sky all along.

Follow the poet on Instagram - Mya W.

The River Knows the Illusion of Light by Louise Primeau. — Canadian landscape on 30 x 40 canvas.

About The River Knows the Illusion of Light.

Painted in acrylics on a 30 x 40 gallery wrapped canvas, The River Knows the Illusion of Light is a highly textured landscape as you can see in the above photo.

There are many paintings under this final atmospheric work of art, the most recent being hydrangeas (below) that were on the dining room wall in our former home where we lived for five years.

End of season hydrangeas by Louise Primeau. — The final painting.

I grew tired of this painting. Like many other artists, I repurposed the canvas rather than trash it or keep it in a dark corner. The hydrangeas were the last layer before I turned the canvas vertically and decided to try my hand at a landscape.

I knew I wanted the scene to feel moody - maybe a reflection of the times...and so the colours range from green gold in the treetops where the early morning sunlight might skip over the branches to the dark, inky blues of the cool forest floor that disappears into the shadows.

The rapids are a nod to the waterways near my hometown. Actually, even the forest reminds me quite a bit of the natural beauty around the Sturgeon River which flows into Lake Nipissing in Ontario. That landscape has stayed with me even though I have been living five hours away for many decades.

I wasn't sure about the "puddle" in the right-hand corner but in the end, decided to leave it untouched. I love how the light is brightest in that little opening where the forest breaks to let the river pass through.

the artist with Made Out of Thin Air — Made Out of Thin Air now hanging in dining room.

Another painting under The River.

Before the hydrangeas, the canvas was home to Made out of Thin Air. (2019)

It also was in my dining room in my home in Ottawa (Orleans). As you can tell, many canvases have long lives in my studio. I don't think I am different than other artists in that respect. Artists like having a hidden history underneath the visible surface. The texture does add depth to the finished painting, something that I have only recently come to appreciate in the entire process.

For those of us who enjoy experimentation, a canvas can go through many lives before reaching its final destination - much like that river in my most recent painting.

The finished landscape in my dining room. — The landscape in my dining room.

In my new studio, coffee in hand.

Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives

from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself.
― John Berger

Louise's ARTiculations

The River Knows the Illusion of Light.