MAGNIFICENT MEMOIR: MOVING WATER
DAVE HALL - MOVING WATER
Dave Hall has two lifelong passions: fly fishing and painting. His new memoir, “Moving Water: An Artist's Reflections on Fly Fishing, Friendship and Family,” is a beautiful collection of 20 personal vignettes and 42 oil paintings.
Hall grew up in rural New England, surrounded by both art and nature.
The artist’s ethereal landscape paintings and memory snippets are both soft impressions of some of his favorite fishing spots in the Greater Yellowstone Country of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. “A piece of my heart resides there, due in large part to the poetry associated with the convergence of family and friends, moving water and mayfly hatches,” Hall says.
“I was introduced to the Centennial Valley in the mid-1990s, drawn to a fishing hole called McDonald Pond. Home to an explosive strain of rainbows, we would arrive in July for opening day following waterfowl nesting season. Then one year there was no pond.”
By Dave Hall. “Dawn Upper Red Rock Lake, Centennial Valley. Utah.”
Shimmering pastel colors, in hazy geometric swaths, tell stories of beauty and grace. His simple narratives celebrate the magnificence of solitude set within the magnificence of nature.
“I am moved by the half-light of dawn and dusk,” Hall muses.
Hall cites Impressionists Mark Rothko, Wolf Kahn, and Russell Chatham, along with American tonal painters George Inness and Albert Pinkham Ryder as his influences.
By Dave Hall. “Dawn & Dusk.”
When Hall was an Artist in Residence at The Taft-Nicholson Center, at the University of Utah, his studio view of the vast valley to the stripe of Upper Red Rock Lake inspired him daily. “I painted the Valley—experimenting and risking—and I thought a great deal about giving back, doing my part to support wild places and clean, moving water,” he recounts.
By Dave Hall. “Centennial Sunset.”
Hall is a graduate of the University of New Hampshireand Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
"You will probably read this beautiful little book in the time of a cup of tea but you will want to contemplate it over and over again."
--Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and author of Let My People Go Surfing
"The sensitive words and striking visual make Moving Water a work of uncommon beauty.”
-- Rene' Harrop, author of Learning from the River
By Dave Hall. “Up in the Hills.”
By Dave Hall. “Along the Gibbon.”
Read more about Beautiful Memoirs all this week on BeautifulNow. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
By Dave Hall. “On the Varney Bench.”
Want more stories like this? Sign up for our weekly BN Newsletter, Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. Join our BeautifulNow Community and connect with the most beautiful things happening in the world right now!
Do you have amazing photos? Enter them in this week’s BN Photo Competition.
By Dave Hall. “East Across the Madison Valley.”