A river journey can be seen as a metaphor for life – a lively beginning in the folds of a high mountain, fed in its youth by its surroundings, coming to full strength before its power dissipates in the ocean. The temptation to spend some time (27 days in fact) hiking alongside and then carried by one of America’s wildest and most beautiful rivers in order to make a series of paintings was irresistible. There is something uniquely satisfying about traveling at the river’s own speed – rushing exhilaratingly between canyon walls or meandering slowly through flatlands under a huge sky.
All my work is about journeys - the concept for this series is satisfyingly straightforward. Hike to the bowl, high in the Sawtooth Mountains, where the first trickle of the Salmon River oozes out of the rocks, follow it downstream until it becomes wide enough to kayak, kayak until it becomes a river wide enough to take a four-person sportboat, and float it until the confluence with the Snake 415 miles later. We started in June 2002 and I made one painting every day.
My paintings do not simply describe the look of the landscape. They also attempt to say something about the journey: observations, personal anecdotes, the flora and fauna, geology, history and culture of the route. Although the souvenirs may seem arbitrary, seen together they make up a coherent body of observation. The painting for each day has been organized into a formal structure – landscape / diary / observations / natural history / a “found object” symbolic of the timeline of human interaction—a “votive figure” from prehistory at the headwaters through a tourist souvenir at the confluence. The link between these elements is sometimes overt, sometimes subtle. In this way I hope to describe my response to “The Whole Salmon.”
Part of my purpose is to return from my journeys with evidence of the sublime beauty to be found, as Robert Frost put it, “on the road less traveled.” For the most part I was not disappointed. Many stretches of the river are completely unspoilt, and in many others – areas of abandoned mining claims for example – nature has started to heal the scars. Traveling along between riverbanks, focused on the immediate surroundings, we were often unaware of major depredations quite close by. Nonetheless it is impossible not to notice that in many places the river is under threat from suburbanisation. Everybody wants their own piece of paradise and in gaining it they destroy it. Major stretches of the river have fallen prey to developers – the wide open spaces of the West are rapidly being lost to Ranchette subdivisions. Civilization would be better measured, not by the area under landscaped lawns and driveways, but by the area we are prepared to leave alone.
Tony Foster
Cornwall
June, 2003
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