This section is under construction. Process documentation photos for each piece are being organized and readied for uploading to the blank sections. Thanks for your patience- so many process pictures to pull… who knew? It’s the journey.
The Way On:
Quivet Neck and Crowes pasture are iconic Cape Cod locales. To be there for me is always a meditative process unfolding. The Way On attempts to evoke that feeling, inviting the viewer to walk into that world apart, at dawn as night slips away to the west and the morning unfolds in the east. The time of day and of night provide that point where they function in tandem, balancing, and supporting, the one of the other and vice versa. The moment depends on the tension held between the two.
The carousel below, with labeled photos #1 - #20, documents the process of the painting.
It began by distilling the many walks in Crowes Pasture on to the Quivet Marsh and Beach over at least a year. (#s 1-9)
Once the scene was fixed and the many photos combined into one view, the painting began. (#s 10-20)
I hope that you can enjoy my journey as much as I did.
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#1
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#2
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#3
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#4
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#5
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#6
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#7
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#8
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#9
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#10
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#11
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#12
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#13
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#14
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#15
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#16
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#17
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#18
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#19
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#20
The Way Off:
Quivet Neck and Crowes pasture again call. The Way Off is the end of a meditation. It is the balance point between the arriving dawn and the departing night. The path leads up and points off the beach, the bay, with the wind blowing at the back pushing the viewer back to a reality off the beach bringing the memories of the walk and the time spent. The view is the reverse of The Way On. The fence post to the right leads the viewer with the coming day toward whatever awaits as the path goes up and over the dunes toward the marshes.
The Presence of Snow.
The finished work is a definite departure from my usual zone of comfort and style, as well as subject; the piece came on like the weather can; no control.
As I painted, and looking inward for what I sought to create, I was amazed at the intrusion of snow memories of my teen years.
The piece began, pasture and woods, a fall landscape with trees, fields, and a swampy pond, not frozen but on its way; fall colors, lower temps, and feel.
It was not to be. The piece called me to a colder process, a change in the weather. Layers of memory, calling for layers of renewed depth, and for me, nontraditional color, eventually to only white, created a dynamic that moved the piece slowly, steadily, with its own mind toward the enveloping snow.
This piece, so muted, initially unidimensional, and so abstract for me, created a moment and a vision from the past.
Walking out on a late clear afternoon after school in fields and woods with the dog, being enveloped in a sudden snow coming on from the ever-darkening east, but not anticipated so soon. Shortening distance, yes, blinding view, no; peaceful and comforting with glimmers of the blotted westward sinking sun leaving glimmers of what had been, only moments prior.
The lack of wind was somewhat and initially disconcerting, combined with the heavier ongoing snow fall, creating an other-worldly experience sharpening the senses to an amazing awareness of the snow itself, beginning to hide all else. No sounds other than the faint hiss of the fall on the already fallen flakes, with waves, drifts, and shadows.
All of this combined with the feel of the snow on any exposed skin, including the tongue, perhaps for denied curiosity and perhaps for fun, elicited, a further immersion in this new and ultimately transient world that was so apart.
Presence of Ice.
This finished work is a definite departure from my usual zone of comfort and style, as well as subject.
As I painted what I thought was to be a winter scene of beach and bay, I began looking inward for what I sought to create and I was amazed at the winter memories of my early teen years. The scene changed to fields, a pasture and a pond for livestock; among the last to be seen there as developments and roads were planned and built; urban empty spread. I found myself returning to winters in Delmar, NY- from 1963 and on for a few years.
The times were challenging as I tried to integrate myself into a foreign world and school, with winter and cold after my warmer more formative years in Mexico DF. I spent time inside myself, as well as forced outside, being walked by the dog as she hunted in the fields where we walked; a keen nosed beagle; she chased the rabbits, which worried me, her chasing, so I chased her while she chased them.
The wind blew, it seemed so cold in those days, and I was in my own weird world trying to understand the US experience and what was expected of me... what my parents wanted, which, as I was the last of 3 and the only one at home, was to be not bothered, not upset, and or not disturbed... Just do what’s expected... and that was, what? I had no idea. But following along, I skated with other kids on the pond in the fields where she hunted, which brings me to ICE.
The cow pond after school... a quick walk to the farm when it was frozen... with kids in my neighborhood, we skated...
An elegant line on ice is beautiful. A spray of ice at a cut or stop is glorious...the built up scrapings of the ice along the pond edges, so foreign, were just amazing to me... which is what I endeavored to include in the piece. Palette knives, , fingers, palms, metal spreaders, wall paper scrapers, scratching tools and stubby brushes all helped to work up the memories into this piece.
As I go back in my mind to the ice, and bring it up or out to look at again, this piece became more and more a metaphor for my then inner self as much as it is an interpretation of a an actual frozen world of ice, with all the colors of memory there, gray, white, and black lines, light blue reflected on sunny afternoons, cow shit in spots from their watering before the freeze, shadows of brown cracks, along with blue veins white veins, and the smooth spread where the wind had pushed the water before freezing. And it was always beautiful for me, until the cold interfered or I worried about how I looked or acted, never having been in the winters before, or having lots of kids in my life... clueless- utterly... I had only a couple of friends in Mexico, and I spent my time alone, in the presence of the gardener, the maids, the laundry lady...with my father working, and my mother out... It could be just as cold and freezing in the DF as much as in the Delmar winters in the mid 60s.
San Pedro Atacama, Chile
Laguna Verde
For Leopold- Arizona Sunset
Tempe, AZ
