Living on the water in the Sausalito floating homes community for almost a decade has taken the art of Jarl Forsman in exciting new directions. As a painter, clothes and interior designer, she has expressed herself in many different ways over the years, but her regular voyages around Richardson Bay in her small motor boat opened up an entirely new world of artistic expression for her. Exploring the nooks and crannies of Richardson bay at various times of day, she began to notice the play of light and color on the water. She observed how the gentle ripples of the boat’s wake slightly distorted the images of various objects she saw reflected in the water. She was so mesmerized by these unpredictable distortions that she started photographing what she saw.
Understanding that the combination of light, wind and water texture would never again coalesce in the same, identical way made the random and delightfully surprising results of these expeditions even more remarkable. While the images themselves are artistically and aesthetically magical, Jarl began to experiment with digital alteration using a variety of programs to transmute the original images and create stunning, atmospheric works of art. Some are sedate and refined, others are whimsical and jocular, but they are all part of an homage to the most necessary, pervasive and critically life-supporting of natural elements: water. These images comprise a body of work that is the result of extensive, repeated experimentation, endless variation of natural light, weather and water conditions in combination with an enthusiastic, artistic eye that knows what to look for, how to enhance it and how to have fun playing with it. But perhaps the most important ingredient in this new art form is her deep gratitude for having stumbled upon this medium as a mode of artistic expression.