pickerel weed is changing colours,                                                                                                                                adopting reds on their way out,                                                                                                                                                   breezes stir the waters a little cooler now,                                                                                                                                                                                              the air thins to purples

windstirred moments

pickerel weed 19 devil’s lake
24″ x 24″
watercolour / acrylic painted directly on gessoed birch panel

Ed Reliuga sublime.

You do realize, Michael, that I have truly depleted my glossary of descriptive adjectives. Thanks to you, I’m going to actually have to either repeat and recycle them or I simply will have to “make up” some new ones.

This summery image is “superdelicious”.

And just to make it clear…… I’m serious. Your work never ceases to astound me. Really. I am truly in awe at how you are able to capture glimpses of not only a visual image but the emotional and the visceral feelings of Summer…..of a stolen moment….. a glimpse of light….of joy.

Micheal Zarowsky a close friend, who has since left us, god bless him, back in 1981 wrote up a one page summary of and for us: it holds true today as it did yesterday: Micheal Zarowsky seems to have a line of vision that is altogether novel and intriguing. He sees some fragment of a far larger landscape and he takes this element, turns it a little, plays with the colours, and creates a painting that is highly appealing blend of Impressionism and realism

Thus there is a grand landscape of cedar trees along a meandering sunlit river. This artist pierces this scene like a hungry accipiter, and in a moment the view becomes a great cedar root rising above a small pool of water. On the one side there is a clump of marsh marigolds, and on the other side sticks and reeds form a complex tangle Micheal sees all this but he elects to show us a small part of the water’s surface with a few leaves floating there, the broken reflection of the root, the yellow flowers and the reeds, and a veiled glimpse of the stones and ridges on the bottom of the pool.

The effect is startling because it is extraordinarily evocative of an Ontario landscape. We have seen all this intricate microcosm a thousand times, but it may never have occurred to us how much it is an essential part of the more familiar whole. We might wish that Micheal would stay at home in Grey County, or in Georgian Bay, or Muskoka, because we have an abundance of subject matter to offer him here. Even so, he has recently travelled to Nova Scotia where, to the surprise of no one at all, he has discovered dories and dinghies, great barnacle-encrusted posts, rocks, fish houses and salt ponds. And, of course, the result has been a whole new series of paintings in which we see the surfaces, lines, volumes and masses of colour that make us think of the sea and of the people who live there. Once again the work tends to be suggestive, allusive, and yet unmistakably of Nova Scotia, and by Micheal Zarowsky. It is a remarkable achievement. This artist has an uncanny ability to isolate the essence of a landscape, and then illuminate the small part of the whole, which becomes the very symbol of that which it represents. That, of course, is what abstraction is all about; but the genius of Micheal Zarowsky is that he presents the effect of abstraction while he is actually painting in a realistic way some isolated element that signifies, with utmost economy, the wider scene.

Anyway, we may rejoice that Micheal has returned from Nova Scotia and is once again finding river banks crowded with irises, and transparent pools, and fallen ironwood branches. And, as you will see, he has come upon our old Ontario bridges with their massive cement piers and their peculiar tendency to do altogether Mayan things with sunlight and shadow.
In fact this probably presages some future trip in which Micheal will actually see Chichen Itza and Tulum with his own eyes. One thing, however, is certain, he will not render the whole temple. He will take the iguana’s eye view of one small face of wall, and he make us understand that the ruins of the Yucatan are every bit as appealing as as are the bridges of the Saugeen River.

Ian Andrew Malcolm,

Ed Reliuga Well written and certainly true. Ian sums up an aspect of the appeal your work has for myself and so many others. But there is an undefinable quality to your work….something that can’t be put into words…..it can only be “felt”.

Again, thank you for sharing this…..and, of course, your work with us.

Micheal Zarowsky well we like to think we are painting our experience / we want to place you there, even though we hope to not see you there so we can have it all to ourselves…….sundown eramosa river sideroad east of guelph 11 x 15 watercolour on arches paper

Marilyn M. Elliott Micheal Zarowsky Oh…beautifully written and apt description of your work, Micheal. He nails it. For me, though, it’s not just what you see, it’s how you manage to re-create it on canvas or paper that is most amazing.

Micheal Zarowsky Marilyn M. Elliott re create it? oh that is easy Wendy marks it all in for me first…. 1 is for yellow; 2 for red….4 for blue – i keep forgetting what number 3 is…..

Marilyn M. Elliott Micheal Zarowsky Ha!

Tania Kasperska Wonderful artwork..!!!

Micheal Zarowsky morning Tania, thanks we are having fun working the pickerel weed in new directions beyond yesterdays efforts