The Resonance of Footprints
Acrylic painting
10'h x 32"w (triptych)

Mary Bee Kaufman

created in response to Footprints
composed by Aaron Keyt

Aaron Keyt’s music connects with the divergent resonance of sound in the Denali landscape, past and present, bound together by space and time. I was drawn to a metaphysical aspect of space and time in the music, which became the color component, blue. Three sections of music become three panels connected through color and movement with shapes influenced by time signature and tempo. 

The first panel begins in the rich depths of dark blue underlying the “metaphorical footprint” of ancient antecedent rivers. The 3/4 time signature creates a dance-like rolling cadence of organic shapes abrading and separating.

In the second section the neutral blue-gray background transitions behind the fierce robust chords of massive prehistoric creatures pounding the ground with each step in contrast with brushstrokes flung to the flitting clicks and pizzicato of the fragile and ethereal scent of bumblebee pollen-wax trails.

The third section flows to the scattering of hue and light, a dispersion of color and shape as “wind blowing through trees, leaving no trace.”