Primary Window (Early Spring)

oil on panel

24" x 18"

I love Matisse's Window at Tangier painted in Morocco in 1912. It is the type of window that opens in, which becomes the side panel of the painting. The painting deals with this rectangle of pink, the pinks and oranges in the view to the red-orange vase with flowers on the sill, and the blues including the large rectangle at the top. Paint is dappled in areas to reflect light. The title is due to its primary color composition of blue, red, and yellow (three central bands). It's what your eye wants to see, after all.

Primary Window (Early Spring) is frontal. Whites and grays frame it from bright on the left to dark on the sill. The colors aren't very exaggerated; it is a day of bright blue sky, bleached grass uncovered from snow, and bare trees more pink than brown. Vertical ripples of the curtains bracket the woods, drawn like the colors shimmer. The lightness of the colors and the paint handling make it airy. Vital are the space between the trees, their rhythm, as does the way the treetops mingle with sky.

Landscape consists of objects: rocks, trees, whatever, the place in the space they inhabit, and that space, coexistence, interdependence. I like seeing the connection between these named things and their context (colors isolated and interacting is the same idea). It is difficult to see oneself that way, maybe impossible. We try to see ourselves, our connections to each other and the world through photographs, Facebook, Google Earth. I think they are all good tools for trying to grasp this thing that can't be held. Sticking one's hand in dirt is another way, a relief to feel something real. Reverend Scott Taylor of the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Rochester describes the mystery between people almost as a force, as God if you are a believer in God. He seems to stick more to just the idea of mystery and something that's there but you don't know what it is; he has a hand gesture to describe it. I think this mystery or energy between people is the same as what I see in the landscape. Lots of people "see it", feel it; I'm just trying to paint it. For that matter, lots of people have tried and continue to try to make art about it. It is what makes painting so difficult, almost daunting at times, but draws one back over and over to engage in the impossible obsession of trying to nail it. Plenty of painters wouldn't have this agenda and would say that they are just trying to make a good picture, Pop Artists, for example. Western Modern Art from the beginning of the twentieth century through today reflects the ideas of Western Society, including religion. Artists ranged in their beliefs from a singular, all-powerful Creator as defined by Christianity and Judaism, to Atheism and everything in between. Painting is a spiritual/religious practice for me. As an undergrad I read Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art which also delved into his ideas about color theory. I don't think there are many great books written since on the subject (let me know if you know of any!) because it is such an intangible area. I'll just keep making tangible things about the intangible and shut up like most painters do.

Trees and Green, Winter Landscape #11 Blue-Gray White

18" x 24" each
oil on panel


This week snow fell yet again in Rochester. There were many whining voices on Facebook. At first charmed in November by the snow scenes in Calvin and Hobbes, the effect wore off my son as he out the window before school remarking, "Curse snow." So I thought I'd pair this winter landscape with a spring one as we skirt the border between the two.


My husband described Trees and Green as being "fairy" as in the land of. I think there is something lush and unreal about it, although I thought of the image after going past a pair of tree trunks and seeing the grass in between. It was green for a few days! Space is created by the transition of green to yellow-green and the tactile quality of the foreground gradually moving toward a smoother top. The green almost seems hot in comparison with the cool tranquility of the winter landscape. The trees of the latter delicately reach into the winter air, less assertive that the trees in the former.


I enjoy the concentration and exactitude of the process of making the dot paintings but I also enjoy painting these expansive, fluid, more immediate pieces. In both cases, as in all my painting, paint is used as light. While on a visit to the MFA Boston during art school, artist Marcia LLoyd asked us in advance to select a piece or two from the collection that we connect with. I chose an enamel bracelet from the Indian Corridor. She saw that I was attracted to the luminous color (like my love of stained glass) and explained that there is a piece of metal inside the bracelet and light passes through the enamel, bouncing off the metal and returning to our eyes. This is the same way paintings often operate in which light passes through the paint to the white ground and back.

The nineteenth century landscape painter Boudin often made small paintings of the ocean with tiny figures in the dress of the times setting the scale and standing on the shore. They are vivid like how one sees in full sun. A quote of his seems to refer to this vibrancy, "To steep oneself in the sky. To capture the tenderness of the clouds. To let the cloud masses float in the background, far off in the gray mist, and then make the blue blaze forth." I am looking forward to dazzling spring and summer light.