How Do You Know You Are There?

Many years ago I spent a few days on Monhegan Island.  I remember walking out of the woods and encountering a painter hauling all his stuff in a cart going in where I came from.  I asked him where he was going.  He said that he didn't know, but he would know when he got there.  For some reason that episode has remained in my memory.  Maybe because I'm always encountering the difficulty of figuring out where to go to paint.

When one is looking for a place to paint in a place much larger than Monhegan Island, which is about any place, it's hard to know where to go, never mind figuring out if you have reached it.  Anyway,  last year I noticed this spot on Rockwell Road in Lanesborogh,MA.  That's the road that goes up to Mount Greylock.  I went there this morning, and painted this view at the turn just before the Welcome Center.  Unfortunately the gate leading up past the center is still closed.  But it was a great view with Pontoosuc Lake in the far distance.  The painting is a 9x12 oil on panel.

Screen of Trees

A 12x12 oil on canvas of a view on Constitution Hill in Lanesborough.   Through the screen of trees the view extends for miles as you climb up to the top.  Winter in the woods offers the opportunity for composing with verticals and horizontals, the old cubist grid.  I think the old cubist grid existed before cubism.  As I write this, and look outside my studio window,  the spot where the squirrel was digging in the snow yesterday is now bare.

Square Hill

A second painting of Constitution Hill, a 12x12 oil on canvas.  The square format strengthens the tensions between slope, sky, trees and shadows, plus that of the color and the natural ambiguity of the setting.

Even in Winter

This oil painting has the same proportions as yesterday's, but is larger, 18x24 inches.  It also displays a new location for me, Constitution Hill in Lanesborough, MA.  This view is at the bottom of the hill.  The landscape painter Neil Welliver commented once how the woods are a "mess".  He was able to bring some order to the woods in his paintings, but to me the "mess" is inherent to the woods.  One can be standing in the woods, and looking, and looking, and still not be able to see clearly.  Even in winter the woods are a mess, but the ground, if snow covered, at least is much simpler.