When Art Forces You to Breathe: How Two Artists Captured Water’s Soul
In an age where we scroll past 10,000 images daily, the joint exhibition Refractions by Lynne Miller Jones and Stephen Guenther feels almost rebellious. This isn’t about shock value or viral moments—it’s about making viewers stop. Really look. And in that pause, discover how two artists, working in different mediums, uncovered a shared obsession: water as a living, breathing entity that defies capture.
The Unlikely Marriage of Paint and Pixel
What happens when a photographer who’s shot 4,000 images of Bahamian tides collides with a painter who once turned nursing into a career hiatus? A collaboration that shouldn’t work—but does. Jones’ paintings, which flirt with photorealism until you lean in and see the brushstroke chaos, sit beside Guenther’s frozen seawater swirls. The genius isn’t in their similarity, though. It’s in how both artists wrestle with the same paradox: water’s refusal to be pinned down.
Personally, I think this tension is what makes their work resonate so deeply. We live in a world obsessed with control—algorithms, productivity hacks, curated Instagram lives. But water? It laughs at our plans. Guenther admits to stepping into hidden holes while photographing, and Jones describes her process as “zooming in on a quarter of a photo until it abstracts itself.” Both are chasing something slippery, which feels like a metaphor for creativity itself.
Why Water? Because It’s the Ultimate Mirror
Let’s get philosophical for a second: water doesn’t have a fixed form. It’s the ultimate blank canvas for human projection. Jones’ journey back to art through her children’s competitive swimming makes total sense to me. When you watch someone immersed in water—whether a swimmer or a wave—you’re not seeing the water itself. You’re seeing its relationship with light, movement, and the observer. It’s physics as poetry.
Guenther’s decades-long Bahamian pilgrimage adds another layer. His comparison of swirling water patterns to Zen garden rakes isn’t just aesthetic—it’s spiritual. In an interview, he mentioned how the act of photographing becomes meditative, a “disappearance” of everything except the moment. I’ve written before about how art can be a form of mindfulness, but this takes it further: their work isn’t just about water. It’s about the state of being that water forces us into.
Technical Mastery vs. The Human Element
One of the most fascinating details? Jones is going back to school at 50-something to pursue her MFA. Not because she needs the credential, but because she wants to absorb “technical secrets” from younger artists. Contrast this with Guenther’s meticulous gallery mockups—planning every inch of wall space like a chess game. Both approaches reveal something about their relationship with impermanence: Jones seeks growth; Guenther seeks control over the uncontrollable.
What many people don’t realize is how much their technical choices reflect modern art’s crossroads. Jones’ paintings, which start as photographs before becoming abstracted odes, feel like a rebuttal to the idea that digital tools kill “authenticity.” Meanwhile, Guenther’s 50-year photography journey—from film to digital—mirrors the art world’s own identity crisis. Their work isn’t nostalgic or futuristic. It’s stubbornly present.
The Real Exhibit: Us, the Viewers
Here’s the kicker: the artists don’t want to impress you. They want to slow you. Jones’ plea—“Take a moment to look”—sounds simple until you realize how broken our attention spans are. Guenther’s “meditative quality” isn’t just in the water; it’s in the act of observing. I left wondering: is this exhibition secretly a social experiment? What happens when you force a TikTok-generation audience to stand still in front of a painting for five minutes?
This raises a deeper question about art’s role in the 2020s. We’re drowning in content but starved for meaning. Refractions doesn’t give answers. It just holds up a mirror made of water—and dares us to see ourselves in it.
Final Thoughts: Why This Matters Beyond the Gallery Walls
Let’s zoom out. Jones and Guenther aren’t just making art; they’re quietly critiquing our relationship with time. Their six-year journey to this exhibition feels like a middle finger to our “launch it now” culture. And their shared fascination with water’s transience? It’s a reminder that the most profound truths can’t be captured in a single frame or a single lifetime.
If you take a step back and think about it, isn’t that the ultimate creative rebellion? To make people care about something as old as water in a world obsessed with the next big thing? In my opinion, Refractions succeeds not because of its technical brilliance—which is undeniable—but because it asks the hardest thing of all: to look, really look, at something we’ve seen a million times. And maybe, in doing so, we’ll remember how to see the world anew.
