This work is of a limestone bridge located in one of our city parks, where there is a natural spring to which local folks come and collect drinking water. The painting captures the remnants of winter just at the turning point when the seasonal cold and snowfall are letting loose their grip on the landscape, and in the lengthening warmer days and shorter nights there is a sense of Spring to come. Already, a day afterwards, most of the snow is now gone.
You wouldn’t recognize it in this small oil painting study, but this year’s winter has been a particularly long one, with record storms and snowfalls in frequency and volume, and also the number of consecutive days and nights of sub-zero temperatures. But with this weather condition comes a profound beauty that rests quietly and transforms the landscape. Winter is one of my favorite times of year to paint. The season provides a remarkable variety of subjects with altered appearances, and is in a fairly constant state of change for weeks on end due to differing types of precipitation, thawing, ice glazing everything, overcast or cloudy days, sunlight or bright moonlight on snow covered water, woods, or fields, and a bare bones simplicity of the land robed in subtle color and delicate transitions of form.
I just finished this painting recently and it was dry enough in time to frame it as a donation for this year’s annual art auction fund raiser for the Women’s Fund of the Wayne County Foundation. This was my second time participating in this event, and it pleases me to share that the painting did sell, and that the funds received will be used for philanthropic support of regional organizations.
On an aside, this painting has helped me reflect on where and what I paint. I first moved to Richmond in 1987, and moved away four years later,… then moved back,… then sold my home and moved away once more,… and have now bought a new home and moved back again.
Over these years it somewhat surprises me at times to realize how seldom I have painted works of the surrounding city and landscape, and this piece is one of the few. In my time living here I have focused on traveling to paint and draw in other places, like across New York state, southeastern Pennsylvania, Taiwan, St Croix, North Carolina, the coast of Maine, parts of Europe, the shores of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virgina, and the Southwest, for examples, but for some reason I seldom took time to consider the beauty found at my doorstep. As such, it is my intention to explore, paint, and draw more often within the region around my home here in Indiana. I have “thought” about doing this many times in the past and each year found myself distracted, like this last year, when I spent from May to September watercolor painting and teaching in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. However, this year will be different, I will paint more at home,… at least I think I will,… well, I hope to… but, we shall have to wait and see.