Peace inspired painting by Cyndi Strid awarded 2nd Place Prize at Finding Peace: Art Show and Conversation a juried event sponsored by the Columbia Gorge Community College. Steve Grafe from the Maryhill Museum awarded The Peace Rose Blanket, painting by Cyndi Strid a 2nd Place Prize. Community artists submitted art works designed around the theme of Finding Peace. The award-winning artworks can be seen throughout the Gorge during the month of June 2015 at the Hood River Library, The Discovery Center and The Dalles Art Center. See Upcoming Events for location dates and times.
The creation of the Peace Rose Blanket has a story of it’s own and Cyndi’s narrative follows:
“The Peace Rose Blanket was created in response to the Iraq war. I felt distant from the experience of war and wanted to find a way to understand it. I created two paintings, both complete, and then created a war zone atop one of the finished paintings.
Boom! Flash! Bombed! The painting was destroyed in an instant! Battles, guns, killing, death, fighter planes, funerals, blood, fear and grief found their way onto this canvas war zone.
I kept painting to explore how I might find peace again amidst the chaos and destruction. Layer by layer, day by day I attempted to bury the immediate horrors of war. It took six layers of painting for the Peace Rose to slowly emerge on my war-torn canvas.
My father served in World War II and he always loved the soft yellow Peace Rose. Looking closely you will see residue of the war remaining, horrific memories just beneath the surface.
What I destroyed in an instant took six layers to rebuild and renew into something I could live with. I think of each of the layers that was painted over this war on the canvas, as a year of healing.
Today you see the Peace Rose Blanket, my representation of one person’s attempt to confront the horrors of war and the process of making peace with one’s experience. To move beyond war, to push away the grief, to pull up beauty again from the death and destruction, and to experience the long, effort needed to rebuild wholeness and renewal from what had been torn apart.”
The Peace Rose Blanket is dedicated to the healing process for all of us who are touched by wars at home and overseas. Let us become peacemakers.
Cyndi Strid, Artist
