Mary Iverson
Waterfalls

April 11th - May 3rd 2025

Opening night reception Friday, April 11th 6-9pm

Please contact us to get larger images , detail images, or a video walk around of a piece!

Roq La Rue is thrilled to present our second solo show with acclaimed NW artist Mary Iverson. Iverson is known for her paintings that blend traditional landscape painting with graphic line work that often references industrial ephemera (most notably shipping containers) that reflect humanity’s rampant industrious effects on the world.
For this show, “Waterfalls”, which contain repetitive images of falls painted in various states of artistic distress, she initially saw the subject as a poetic symbol of loss, something pouring into a destructive state. However, she says “…but then I remembered that water has no end. It flows to the ocean then evaporates into the atmosphere, and eventually each drop of water cycles down from the mountains to cascade over the waterfall once again. So the titles carry a double meaning. Yes, truth falls now—but it will cycle back again, over a great period of time. a continuous cycle.”

For this series, I wanted to paint in a way that felt more atmospheric—like the quick watercolor sketches I do when I’m out hiking. While figuring out new techniques, I made a lot of paintings that I really didn’t like. Either the paint felt too dense, or they were too photographic, or they just didn’t have the sense of atmosphere I was aiming for. I didn’t want to see them again, so I started sanding them down to reuse the canvases. During one of these sanding efforts I was like - ohmygod, it’s saying something I didn’t expect, and I need to leave it just like that! Distressed and gorgeous. What I love about the sanding technique is how it connects to the bigger themes in my work. It speaks to our human impact—our power to alter landscapes, the forces of climate change, and the encroachment of industry into wild places. - Mary Iverson