The Blog

I will never cease being attracted to one lone tree standing in a field. There seems to be something majestic as well as vulnerable about this motif. It stands tall and the view is not hindered so the tree is free to impress us with its beauty through the seasons. But it stands alone and is therefore exposed to the full forces of nature i.e. wind, snow, rain, sun. But it adapts and prospers despite these external forces.

           Darwin said that it is not the strongest or the most intelligent that survives but the one that adapts best to change. Seems to me that my lone tree lives quite the same life we do.

In a lot of ways this painting is what on site landscape painting is all about. My wife and I walk 3 miles for exercise every day…well maybe not every day, but we did that this past Saturday and then I gathered my painting gear and headed out to Caumsett State Park on the North Shore of Long Island.

Now I’ve been to Caumsett before and I know there is some walking involved but it took me 3 ½ miles to get to this point! Don’t get me wrong, the view and resulting painting were totally worth the effort but I was looking at about another 3 miles to get back to the car. I remember thinking at one point that being an on site landscape painter is turning out to be good aerobic exercise! A total of six miles with my backpack, tripod and camera on top of the three miles I had walked that morning. But it couldn’t have been a nicer day and, as is always the case when I’m outside looking for paintings, I loved every moment of the “adventure”.

I told my wife that I had done three days worth of walking in one day and for the next two days she was on her own. She just smiled and advised me to be ready the next morning for OUR walk!

This piece is another recently finished but begun long ago painting. I was commissioned back in the late 90's to do a "portrait" of a privately owned stretch of the Battenkill River in Vermont. This famous trout stream meanders slowly through some very pretty farm country on the VT/NY border. In this view the river is just to my right but I was very taken by the beauty of the wildflowers along the bank. There is also something mysterious about the edge of where the field has been mowed and the "wild wall" or natural barrier of hip high vegetation begins. Something always makes me feel as though I don't want to walk in there! I think I just don't want to disturb anything. I do like to feel I have left nature as it was when I arrived.