Paintings of nature on display in Myers Flat

Paintings by Amy Granfield will be on display at Riverbend Cellars and the Groves restaurant in Myers Flat during the months of May and June.

The oil paintings on wood panels in this show represent a wide variety of her work: plants and animals; large and small; portraiture, narrative, and abstract. Through it all there is the common thread of nature. Granfield has a particular view of nature, shaped by science as well as belief.

”People place themselves at the center of their world, and fail to recognize the systematic importance or the “soul” (essence, dignity, nobility) of plants and other animals. Without plants and photosynthesis in particular, there would be no mechanism for energy input into the living world. I paint a world devoid of humans, with plants and animals at the center, enlarged and dominating. They challenge us to remember them, to be discomforted, and to meditate on our relationship with them: our place among them and within them looking back at us. It is an esthetic of both wonder and unease,” she says.

Granfield adds, “Yet artists are opportunists, and the work is equally about what I find, what it says to me, and what I choose to do with it. I personally collect

or photograph all my models.”

The artist is a native of Sebastopol, and a quarter-century resident of Humboldt County.

Riverbend Cellars tasting room is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week. The Groves restaurant, located in the same building, serves dinner from 5-9 p.m., Thursday through Monday.