"The Audubon landscape paintings and their related works stem from a trip I took this past January to Baton Rouge and the surrounding areas. Although at times the works can become more abstract, I still need to work from life as a way to generate ideas, compositions, and color palettes. Trying to invent landscape paintings from my mind in the dead of winter usually does not harvest good results.




A number of these paintings incorporate the meeting of the sky, land, and water. I found spots across small ponds or rivers and made small watercolor studies from life. I was interested in the image below the horizon, how sometimes it mirrored the image above, or at times seemed like a separate world. The allusions and references remain slightly out of reach, yet there is a physical, tactile play between the veiling and exposing of forms with creamy, viscous paint which can feel agitated, tender, and melancholic all at once.




In my work I try to capture, through multiple layers of paint, the history and evolution of the painting itself, much like how a tree or plant will grow and change through its lifespan. Solid forms are broken down, reworked, and moved around. The painting for me is finished when it translates the feeling of connectedness between the earth, the water, the atmosphere, and the viewer."




— Ryan Cobourn




See Digital Catalog for Bailey Series here