There is a uniqueness to the light of high places. Being above everything else, light hits hilltops first in the morning, and last in the evening. I grew up in a house located at the highest point in town, and noticed this light, just as I was aware of the absence of it when living in Vermont’s Mad River valley, tucked down between two mountains, where we were the last to see sunrise and sunset.
In this piece, “Upland Light”, 24 x 16, the light of early morning illuminates things, amplifying shaded areas with an ambient glow caused by the low angle of the sun, casting long shadows and varying degrees of brightness between foreground and background.
The simplicity of the rural landscape, and the slowly receding and obscured architecture of the region’s farming past, is present everywhere throughout New England, but often hidden down dirt roads, off the main routes. This small piece, “Windsor” 12 x 12, is of a scene encountered in central Vermont, in the middle of a hillside meadow, with no sign of the farm it must once have been a part of.
“Farm Wall” | 36 x 36 | oil on canvas
The meadows and fields of New England are crisscrossed with literally hundreds of thousands of miles of stone walls, many now obscured by overgrowth and woods. They are fascinating structures when you really think about them, and get up close enough to see exactly how difficult it must have been to build these without modern machinery.
In Farm Wall, my neighbor’s farm is divided by this wall, once separating the lower sheep meadow with the higher one, where my house currently sits, the land having been sold off years ago. And beyond the woods in the background, more walls (miles of them) wind through the woods, down to the kettle pond, where they disappear into the shoreline.
Just completed 24 x 24, “Coveside”, based on Yarmouth, Cape Cod, coastal cottage.
I’m very pleased to have been invited to participate in a new venture through the Prospect Hill Antiques at Lake Sunapee, NH–The Gallery at Prospect Hill, which features many well-known local and regional artists.
This impressive new gallery occupies three restored, rustic rooms on the main floor of the barn known by many locals and lake-home owners as the premiere antique destination in the Lakes Region.
To learn more about Prospect Hill Antiques, follow this link. A new website will, in the near future, showcase the new gallery space and the established and expansive antiques offerings.
Just completed piece, based on local working farm. As summer comes to an end and fall approaches, local farmers harvest hay for winter feeding. The surrounding trees cast these great abstract shapes, emphasizing the barn’s interior.
On a gray autumn day last October, I was traveling through Vermont, heading North from Cheshire, and came across these two great barns, part of an old sprawling farmstead set on a hill. These two structures sit at the high point of the hill, overlooking the farmhouse and lower meadows. Like many of the weathered, faded barns of the Northeast, these two showed small areas of color, last painted decades ago, reimagined here.
The beautiful Carriage House at Powers Gallery in Acton, MA, showcasing several larger, recent works as part of their annual Holiday Show. For available work, click here.
Several pieces were dropped off at Powers Gallery in Acton Saturday, just ahead of the gallery’s Holiday Show, “A Gift of Art” which opened last night. With Larry Powers, owner, two new pieces “Upland Grove” (right) and “Macintosh” are available, along with others on exhibit. For more information on the show, visit the Powers Gallery website.
I’m pleased to have several pieces in the upcoming show at the Red Piano Gallery on Hilton Head Island. Included in the show will be this new 36 x 36, “Lavender Field” as well as several smaller pieces, including “Northern Pass” 20 x 20, left.
