Tony Foster, Exploring Time: A Painter’s Perspective
In a world where environmental change is often conveyed through striking images of global warming, Foster offers a different perspective, one that considers Earth’s continual evolution and the visible traces of time’s passage
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Tony Foster, Exploring Time: A Painter’s Perspective
Cover: Tony Foster, Rewilding: Minions to Crow’s Nest · Copper Mines Abandoned 1914, 2023. Photo: Paul Mounsey, courtesy The Foster Museum
Between 2007 and 2025, Tony Foster embarked on his 19th Journey, building it around a profound and layered theme: time. Across this body of work, he investigates how time shapes the land—from the quick shifts of light and weather, to the slow rhythms of seasons, to the immense scales of biological and geological transformation. As Foster explains, his aim is “to draw attention to the unseen forces that create place.”
Exploring Time brings together a remarkable series of watercolor diaries that capture nature in motion. His paintings reveal signs of change on multiple fronts: geological upheavals, biological cycles and the marks left by human activity. With a discerning eye, Foster records not only nature’s strength and resilience but also its vulnerability, even in landscapes once dominated by industry and later reclaimed.
In a world where environmental change is often conveyed through striking images of global warming, Foster offers a different perspective, one that considers Earth’s continual evolution and the visible traces of time’s passage. Organized into four themes: geological, biological, human and the fleeting, this exhibition invites viewers to engage with time at every scale, from the span of a moment to the stretch of millennia, while reflecting on the enduring impact of human presence.
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Dayton Art Institute
