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[1997] Since last summer...
I've never claimed to read or write Norwegian. Nevertheless an article under my name will appear in Norwegian this summer, in a Scandinavian art magazine, Kunst for Alle (Art for Everyone), published in Oslo. This article, written by me and translated from English, discusses some of my favorite watercolor techniques, with a number of color reproductions of paintings. The idea was apparently born when the editor talked with Ron Ranson, the English artist-teacher who visits Monhegan Island most years. I am grateful to Ranson for saying in his book that I don't paint the way the island looks, I paint the way it feels. (He then confides to his readers that he would like to paint the way I do.)
Another welcome connection came about when my wife, Lynda, and I visited New Mexico last November. We discovered the delights of Santa Fe and Taos, as many others have done before us. Santa Fe, probably correctly, boasts of having the most art galleries of any city its size in the United States, and Taos can't be far behind.
In one way this high desert country is an outpost of Monhegan. Hyde Solomon spent his last years there painting the desert colors. Fritz Kackley, who was also a Monhegan regular for several years, now lives and paints in Taos. Nancy T. Brown and Jan McCartin are other Monhegan artists who have painted there.
Lynda and I made the rounds of a number of galleries, deciding that the Lumina Gallery lives up to its reputation as the most beautiful. Unexpectedly, the gallery owner, Felicia Ferguson, asked about my work. Then as a result of my sending her some paintings, she took me on. One can now see Maine watercolors in her handsome adobe gallery.
Speaking of handsome galleries -- although this is not a commercial one -- I also think of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art on the mainland. Its large windows face directly to the sea, enhancing the grandeur of its collection. Since last summer, Ogunquit has added three more of my paintings to its permanent collection. To bring my record up to date, also add Framingham State College and the neighboring Danforth Museum in Massachusetts.
And what have I been doing lately? The easiest way to answer is to say that I have been painting horizontal bands of color, in watercolor and colored pencil. Each of these paintings seeded another, for I have rediscovered the truth that combinations of any three colors are truly infinite in number. My newer discovery is that, to me, all these combinations are reminiscent of the elements of land or sea. Therefore I have given this series the general names of "Travelogue," "Travelogue West," "Voyageur," and "Horizontal Visions." The precise locale of each is left to the imagination of the viewer.
[Summer 2003]
[Summer 2001]
[Summer 2000]
[Summer 1999] |
