Artist: Andrew Payne
Title: Morning Reading
Medium: oil on panel
Size: 13 x 34 (18 x 38.5)
Artist Statement: These paintings explore how the practice of reading can mark the chapters of our lives and heighten our experience of the present. To spend time with a book is to turn away, for a while, from the immediacy of the world in pursuit of something deeper. A book that finds us at the right moment can inspire a personal turning of a page. The chapters of a life can be marked by the books read within it. In this way, books become more than objects; opening a once-read book may return us to a time, a place, or a person we once knew. At its best, reading is an act of communion. Pages and palms turn upward in unison, the head bows, and the book and reader open together.
