Spring #13,14, & 15

Spring Landscape #15 Lincoln Woods 24" x 18" oil on panel

Spring Landscape #14 Rainy March 27" x 21" oil on canvas

Spring Landscape #13 It Stopped Raining 12" x 12" oil on panel

"Avery is first a great poet. His is the poetry of sheer loveliness, of sheer beauty... This - alone - took great courage in a generation which felt that it could be heard only through clamor, force and a show of power..." - Rothko's eulogy for PAINTER Milton Avery, (appearing in Milton Avery The Late Paintings, by Robert Hobbs 1946, Abrams Inc.).

I can relate to Avery in the way he painted, as a colorist favoring landscape, and the difficulty of being engaged with natural beauty in a tumultuous and increasingly technological world. I see this tension in my new painting, Spring Landscape #15; the branches electrified and pointing to a focal point in one-point perspective. The struggle of art in contemporary life seems to be coming up more and more. In her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, writer Terry Tempest Williams considers beauty and art and its place in the world. She places art in juxtaposition with the environmental crisis and the Rwandan genocide. She believes art is a way of survival, and so do I.

We've recently recuperated from flooding here in Rhode Island. I had to scramble to bring many of my large paintings up from the basement, packing my dining room and studio. I only got a half-inch of water, nothing like neighboring towns needing evacuation. Numbers thirteen and fourteen came out what seemed like an endless string of rainy days leading up to the flooding of parts of I-95 South. My backyard was squishy and the greens brilliant and mossy. The back story of these paintings involves joyfully finding my imitation Wellies from our recent move, composting in downpours, stir crazy dogs barking and missing walks, and the basement reaching the humidity level of 50%, the ideal for art. All this is real to me just as much as the health care debate and anything else in The New York Times. Like Avery, I am guilty of loving light, color, and loveliness and am not detached.