Water Paintings

A Return to Nature

Alan Sonneman had grown up on the upper Mississippi River in a small college town sandwiched between the river and two lakes. Being on or in the water was a constant part of his childhood. In 1979 to escape the heat of Washington DC, he spent the summer on a lake north of Toronto. There he started playing with how images were distorted through water as a way to move on from the politically orientated subjects such as the Last Wahington Painting. Then in 1980 he met someone who would lead him on an adventure back to California and the Sierra Nevada mountains. In the fall of 1882 the artist left DC and politics behind and moved to a loft in Los Angeles.