Seasons of Light

Does the season dictate what we paint?  Or is it the play of light and shadow?  Or both?   These are small sketches I did over the past year -- some were painted in the winter/early spring in my travels up through Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire --  

Late Sun on Snowfields (mixed media; 8"x10")

Distant Mountains (mixed media; 8" x10")

While these were painted earlier this summer at the Cape --

Sand Dunes and Marshes (watercolor; 5" x7")

Cape Light (watercolor; 5" x 7")

Tracking the Sun (watercolor; 5" x 7")

Why landscapes and at other times abstracts?  I'm beginning to think that it may have much to do with the light.  In the winter and autumn, the light plays across the land, catching out colors and contours.  While in the summer, one often can't even see the land because your sight is overwhelmed with the intense light and the heat waves shimmering off the surfaces of water, sand and marshes.

Now I'm watching the late afternoon skies more often, noting the lowness of the sun, the cast of shadows stretching just a bit more across the gardens and lawns.  Temperatures have dropped at dusk and there's the need for a sweater or light jacket.

We have moved from the pastels of spring to the intense yellows and reds of late summer.  In a few weeks, the persimmons and ambers of autumn will take their place, along with the smell of woodsmoke and hot cocoa.  

But for now I'll take what I see, shift my toes in the cool grass and sip at a glass of chilled white wine while I splatter paints across the blank white page . . . 

In nature, light creates the color. In the picture,

color creates the light. 

Hans Hofmann 

A Sense of Place

There are some places that live with us. Perhaps we grew up in these special spaces; perhaps we live in them currently. They become a part of our psyche, like a silent tapestry that abides within . . .

For me, it is the oceans, rivers and lakes of the Northeast. I grew up on eastern Long Island and could walk to the beach from my house. My husband and I, when we were dating, spent most of our free time at the beach. Every summer we head for Cape Cod and our children, now grown, follow in the familiar path to the Cape.

Every autumn we head north to Maine and walk the coastline, drinking in the wide open spaces, the quicksilver skies. On my daily commute I pass along the CT River and witness amazing turns of light and of seasons.

These sketches and paintings are my attempts to capture those moments . . .

Encroaching Storm [watercolor and gouache]

Spindrift, West Dennis [watercolor and gouache]

Thunder Skies [watercolor and gouache]

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.” 

Joan Didion

Variations on a Theme

How does one envision an image? How does one interpret that vision?

I love the coastline and spent many summers on the beaches of Long Island, NY where I grew up. Not only summers but every season really and in all types of weather. Actually, Long Island is like one giant sandbar, as my Dad used to joke!

I'm not sure if it was the wide open spaces of the beaches or the vast skies or that thin scrim of a horizon line between ocean and sky that I loved the most. Or perhaps the dunes and the waves. In the midst of February, all these images and smells and sounds fill my head.  These two works seem to evoke some aspect of those memories, yet in very different ways and methods --

Coastal Haze

This is a fairly small work done on Wallis pumiced paper with acrylics and touches of pastel, done quickly with large mop brushes.

And this one was painted with oils on a thick heavy 200lbs. acrylic paper by Strathmore, which sold a few months ago at the Hartford Open Studio weekend.

Wetlands, Orleans MA

Different mediums, different approaches -- and yet both seem to capture a sense of the coast and surrounding wetlands. And I suppose that's the best one can hope for --

In summer, the song sings itself.

~William Carlos Williams

A Changing Light on the Landscape

Working on some new approaches to landscape painting, trying to avoid that "pat" formulaic technique -- tree here, water there, etc...  Looking for the light, too. Not necessarily the beautiful light of a summer's day but rather the tempestuous light of a passing storm . . . scudding clouds roiling over a stretch of marshland in the early evening hours when shadows begin to creep across the land.

Passing Storms

oil on canvas

12 x 16

The other kind of light, which is much more difficult to capture, is the night. This painting, working from some photos I had taken at the Cape, was an attempt to evoke the light of a large, luminous moon. You know the type -- the one that looms up over the horizon while you're driving and you just about slam on the brakes because it is so awesomely beautiful it takes your breath away . . .

Harvest Moon

oil on canvas

9 x 12

Both are quite different in my approach as I truly beat these canvases to death, poor things, trying for that impressionistic, lost edge look. I painted, scraped back, etched with tip of the brush, smudged with fingers. You name, I think I did it. The camera shots are not good; I took them rather quickly as I brought down the show at Aetna, so my apologies. But with winter upon us I didn't think I'd have much opportunity to do a shoot outdoors, which is usually what I do to avoid costly professional photographer fees.  It's also another reason why I usually paint on a smaller scale so I can scan the painting and then upload, print, etc.

Here are a few works that I've admired for years from the American Tonalist school of artists that painted in the late 19th century and early 20th century.  Their works celebrated the natural landscape, especially in light of the encroaching industrialism in the East.  Henry James wrote that their shared vision was one of experiencing the natural landscape as a "personal epiphany" -- ah, yes!

George Inness' Early Autumn, Montclair

James Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold

Charles Warren Eaton's Sunset Glow

Painting is by nature
a luminous language. 

Robert Delaunay

On an August afternoon

Dunes

acrylic, gouache & pastel

august
summer winding down
a breath of north wind
tickles sun-burnt skin

dunes slumber
under the weight of heat
waters sluggish

tiny birds
dodge about wetlands
no longer wet . . .

i close my eyes
to the bright light and
dream of crisp breezes
and cooled stone beneath
my feet

autumn is knocking
at the door
on the threshold

i roll over . . .

A quick trip to Cape Cod in the autumn does wonders for one's spirit! Glorious weather, walks on the beaches, good food, good wine, good reading and to spend time with a true friend -- what more can one ask? Just thought I'd share some of the photographs from our time away -- enjoy!