Summer #1

6" x 12"

oil on panel

Here is a summer one for you now that it is August. The trees are dense with leaves, bits of color and texture begging for dots. I like the undulation of the tree line, difficult to imagine convincingly without direct observation. Greens range from yellows to blues, light to dark, bright to subdued. Sometimes in winter the contrast seems closer and I miss hitting the different keys. The painting I do isn't isolated but comes out of a cultural context.

I've written a bit about the history of landscape painting in America. Painting the landscape was a matter of pride in the eighteen hundreds, a new territory for painters to conquer like the explorers. Europe has old monuments and a long history, but America has its land. It became a matter of pride, the Grand Canyon acts as our Coloseum. I came across an interesting snippet about President Roosevelt. He initiated conservation plans. Aware that resources will run out (even the Ancient Puebloans of Mesa Verde had that problem), he began initiatives resulting in the preservation of approximately 230,000,000 acres of American land in the form of National Parks and Forests and other preservations. He speaks to Congress:

"To the Senate and House of Representatives:

. . .The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life. . ..As a nation we not only enjoy a wonderful measure of present prosperity but if this prosperity is used aright it is an earnest of future success such as no other nation will have. The reward of foresight for this nation is great and easily foretold. But there must be the look ahead, there must be a realization of the fact that to waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. .."

My little painting is a reminder of the beauty of the natural world and the personal revitalization it offers.