Artist Navigates A River Of Words

The exhibition will be on view through 3 February 2008. As an environmental planner, American-born Windsor resident Cynthia Barlow Marrs worked on the master plan for the Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton Flood Alleviation Scheme (now called the Jubilee River) along the Thames. As a developing writer, she participated in the “River of Words” creative writing course at the River & Rowing Museum. The two experiences come together in this unusual interpretation.

Ten panels 1.2 metres high are arranged in a row over a span of 12 metres on The Wall in the museum’s Thames Gallery. Visitors approach Undercurrents from the upstream end and follow the river downstream, with the river’s surface at adult’s eye level and the riverbed at child's eye level. Colour flows from one panel to the next, together with shapes cut from hand-coloured collage papers and handwritten fragments of text about rivers and writing.

Cynthia describes Undercurrents as “an attempt to express what it felt like when I first began trying to write fiction. In both rivers and stories, we’re not always aware just how much turbulence there might be under what looks like a calm surface.” Netty Rawlings, River & Rowing Museum Curator, said: “These lively artworks lyrically suggest the grace and movement of river currents beneath the surface, and subtly incorporate a stream of quotes that illustrate the enduring power of the Thames to inspire both art and literature.”

Cynthia Barlow Marrs

Now a full time artist based in Windsor, artist Cynthia Barlow Marrs returned to her art and design roots after living and working in six countries as a landscape architect and environmental planner. In the 1980s her land planning projects included the Development Guide Plan for Kirstenbosch Botanic Garden in Cape Town, and the 60,000-hectare Songimvelo Natural Resource Area near Swaziland. In the early 1990s Cynthia worked on the master plan for the Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton Flood Alleviation Scheme along the Thames. Cynthia uses colour and line to evoke impressions of some of the extraordinary landscapes she has encountered in her land planning work. -- www.rrm.co.uk