Quality of Air

With a month and a half left of my Sabbatical the studio is getting pretty filled up with work. Luckily the other artists and myself will be hosting an Open Studio July 5th aligning with First Fridays in Rochester. So if you are in Rochester, please come by!

The Studio

One of my sleeping companions.

It's an amazing thing when brushes, canvas, paints, and time, give physical form to experience and thought. I'm never quite sure what I'll be creating when I first return to the studio and then somehow it just happens. Memories, poetry, or music along with items, photos, and spaces coalesce. I can see my year in my paintings—the travels, the people, my readings, my walks through the forest, my explorations, my parents, my family and my friends. Though they may seem to be about trees and landscapes, in reality they are about us and our time in this life and the potential of eternity.

Work in Progress, Day1: All of Us 

Work in Progress, Day2: All of Us 

"...it is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes its claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit." —Robert Louis Stevenson

Driving through France

In Fontainebleau I

In Fontainebleau II

In Fontainebleau III

This week I rediscovered some photos I took in France. While there I had been surprised to find that the countryside of France looks remarkably like New York State. Perhaps that is why my father's father settled here. Who knows? My cell phone caught the arrangement of the trees and the lay of the land as we passed through at 60mph. These as well as images I captured in the gardens of Fontainebleau seemed to me to speak of all of us—young, old, middle aged—all passing through this earth to who knows where—all interconnected by chance in mysterious ways.

In the end, I've completed (at least for today) two paintings, one large consisting of 6 joined canvases, the other small using paint left over from the first. This smaller canvas has helped me decide what supplies to take to Italy. I wonder how that trip will influence my perspective and work when next I return to the studio?

Destiny (from paints remaining on my palette) 

All of Us