Fantastical Landscapes

These two paintings, I am happy to announce, will be included in the exhibition "Fantastical Landscapes and Imaginary Places" at The Bryan Gallery in Jeffersonville, VT. from November 9 to December 23.  They depict different aspects of the wooden path that winds its way around and through the darker and heavily rooted side of Jordon Pond at Acadia National Park in Maine.  Both paintings are 18x24, oil on canvas.

Providing Time

Mindscape: an 18x24 oil on canvas of the wooden pathway that goes around half of Jordan Pond.  I posted a pastel study last week.  A landscape like this for me is a metaphor for the mind.

I've been reading another book on the poet Seamus Heaney (Seamus Heaney's Regions by Richard Rankin Russell), which quotes Heaney, who wrote that "artworks... can slow and even stop frantic activity that characterizes most of the rest of contemporary existence... [because] they provide time for the evaluation of intention and consequence.  Even more significantly, they provide time for those extensions of memory into the past and imagination into the future by means of which our lives acquire their genuinely intersubjective and moral dimension."  Heaney creates landscapes of the mind using words.  I try using paint, though I may be disadvantaged since paint splotches have fewer levels of meaning.

Walking the Planks

A 9x12 pastel sketch of another Jordan Pond plank walk to determine how to embark on a painting of it.  I like the serpentine walk way and the segmented view of the pond, which is only visible as light.

An Interior Space

Jordan Pond is a state of mind, an interior space, where I wander down the wooden path around the pond.  This painting is an 18x24 oil on canvas.

Jordan Pond and the Wooden Walkway

In his essay titled "Images" Robert Hass writes that "we all live our lives in the light of primary acts of imagination, images, or sets of images..."  One of my primary images, ever since I visited Jordan Pond ages ago, and probably before, is the wooden path around the west side of the pond.  Below the planks are tree roots spreading across the ground.  Often the pond is not clearly visible, and there are large boulders everywhere.  In this 18x24 oil on canvas painting, I've tried to depict the path as an 'image'.

Another Jordan Pond

This is a 12x16 oil on panel of Jordan Pond from last Thursday morning.  It was done before lunch and popovers.

Jordan Pond

A 12x16 painting of Jordan Pond from last Thursday afternoon at Acadia National Park after lunch and popovers.

At Jordan Pond

This is an 18x24 oil on canvas view of the 'boardwalk' at Jordan Pond at Acadia National Park.  I've wanted to do a large version of this painting for a while.   I did a small oil sketch last year.  Examine the negative space and the tree trunks and the planks.  They set up a triangular pie wedge going back into space, even though some of the 'space' is hidden by foliage and trees.  There are other things happening also, but enough for now.

Another Jordan Pond

Another 8x10 Jordan Pond oil on panel.  I like this one because it's simple and abstract, meaning much is left to the imagination, except it's really Jordan Pond at the North end where the water laps the shore when the wind blows.

Jordan Pond 6

I'm still walking around Jordan Pond: a quickly painted 8x10 oil on panel.  I've starved myself sufficiently from doing pastels, that I plan on doing a few in the coming days.

Jordan Pond 5

What's interesting about this Jordon Pond view is the pie wedge boulder, which repeats in reverse the notch between the 'Bubbles'.  Okay, maybe it's not that interesting.  But I like it anyway.  There's another wedge at the upper left of hill and trees, and then each mountain is a wedge.  Everything is always something else, or resembles something else.  That's what's interesting.

Jordan Pond 4

The rocks that ring Jordan Pond mimic the mountains around it, especially the 'Bubbles'.   Somehow they were all tastefully placed for our enjoyment.  Another 8x10 oil on panel.

Jordan Pond 3

Another in the series of small paintings of Jordan Pond at Acadia National Park.  8x10 oil on panel.  I'm trying to work quickly in the moments that I do paint with these, though there are long pauses in between those quick sessions.

Jordan Pond Path

An 8x10 oil on panel of the planked path on the west side of Jordan Pond.  I tried to work with the positive and negative spaces of verticals in this one, and to keep it simple, the benefit of working small.

Jordan Pond

Quite a while back I had a vision, which I never acted upon until now.  I had the idea of doing a series of small drawings or paintings of locations around Jordan Pond where one naturally wants to pause and look.  This painting is an 11x14 oil on canvas.