Water's Embrace

Waterfall Arts Presents Water’s Embrace: The Works of Jerri Finch
On View: September 10–October 10, 2026

Opening Reception
Thursday, September 10 | 5:30 – 7:30  PM
Waterfall Arts | Clifford Gallery

Artist Talk
Thursday, October 1 | 6:00  PM

For more than 40 years, artist Jerri Finch has been painting water. Through decades of exploration, her practice has evolved from appliqué to airbrush and machine quilting, and ultimately to oil painting. With Water’s Embrace, Finch shares her ongoing pursuit of something beyond the visual representation of water: its movement, sensation, atmosphere, and transformative power.

For Finch, water is not simply a subject. It is an immersive experience. She shares its fluidity, the salt on her lips, the wind in her hair, the droplets of fog on her face, and the sensation of surrendering herself to the water. All of these experiences inform her work.

Cold-water immersion has become an especially transformative part of Finch’s life and creative practice. When the water calls, she enters its cold embrace to float, swim, or gently move with it. These experiences shape her understanding of water, not just as something to observe, but as something to feel.

Water’s Embrace is an invitation to experience water through Finch’s eyes, but also through the senses. Water is the liquid that makes life on Earth possible. As water cycles from the air to the land to the sea and back again, it shapes our planet and nearly every aspect of our lives. These works explore the fluidity, energy, and surrender that come from being immersed in something larger than oneself. There is a peace and joyfulness in this body of work, a sense of fulfillment that time by and in the ocean offers us.

Through this collection, Finch hopes to inspire viewers to do more than look at the water. Instead, she invites us to embrace it in new and playful ways.