There no thrill for an artist quite like selling what one has created. 2010 was a good year for painting a series of works that have sold since their creation. This review reminds me that of my oeuvre, Outer Nature landscape paintings sell ten-to-one over my Inner Nature figure works. Time to refocus for a while…
Down the Intervale #4 aka Inside, Looking Out #? • oil on plywood panel, framed with cut-down window sash 16″ x 31″ • collection of Harriet Kline
Acadia National Park and Mount Desert as seen from across Frenchman’s Bay at Hancock Point, Maine • oil on repurposed door panel 8″ x 38″ • collection of Betsy Alexander and Burnell Yow!, Philadelphia
Haying Season at Cole Farm, Summer of 1955 – oil on panel 15″ x 30″ – collection of Land Cole, Deneki Lakes, Alaska
Commenced in the spring of 2010, finished in 2012. Based on a detail from a black & white 3″ x 5″ snapshot by my brother Wallace Cole; the view looking north to our grandparents farm with the surrounding fields, where haying season was in progress, with a pause in the action. Photographed from the back lawn of the farm where I spent my first 18 years. I started converting the photo to a painting in 2010 at a time when I was seriously weighing the pros and cons of selling my house in Philadelphia, returning to Maine and settling down on the land I grew up on. It was a nice delusion while it lasted…
Center City Philadelphia from Bartram’s Garden in West Philadelphia – oils on panel 5″ x 16″ – collection of Robert Stauffer, Philadelphia
Down the Intervale #6 – oil on pine board 10″ x 30″ – collection of Clark & Georgianna Cole, Dayton, Maine
Back Yard at 37 Pleasant Street • oil on panel 12″ x 38″ • collection of Kate Suchmann, Springfield, Vermont
From 2005 to 2013 I spent a number of weeks each year in Springfield Vermont, where this particular painting was done, my first serious attempt (unfinished) at painting the rather complex architecture of an old house, revealing that house portraits are not a particular strength of mine. I got better at it with practice after this initial August experiment.
“Attic View #2” aka “Inside, Looking Out #8″ • oil on panel, framed 19″ x 24” • collection of Lance & Melissa Rothstein, Philadelphia
The device of a frame within a frame within a frame found its most elegant expression in this painting which I began the summer of 2010, but which didn’t receive its finishing touches until 2015. For me the second delight of this painting is the ambiguously abstract scene seen through the windows which prompts more questions than answers.
“Looking West” (from inside the barn at 588 River Road, Dayton, Maine) • pencil and oil on canvas-board 12″ x 16″ • collection of Audrey & Stephen Terry, Federal Way, Washington
Another painting originally sketched in pencil, on canvas-board, in the summer of 2010. Colorization with oil paints didn’t happen until the spring of 2102. Of all the views which I have painted in Dayton, this one is the most personal because I have stood hundreds of time in this open doorway and stared at the setting sun, at passing traffic, at snowstorms and rainstorms and days of exquisite beauty when I was tempted to say “Stay, please don’t change; let it always be like this!”
2010: “Vermont Hillside” aka “My Own Private Mont Sainte-Victoire #3″ – oil on panel 9″ x 10” – collection of Rachel Fichtenbaum, Boston, Massachusetts
“I may be little but I’m loud!” This small painting portrays a Vermont hillside visible from 37 Pleasant Street in Springfield, which I looked to as my own personal mountain of inspiration, a la Cezanne. The seasonal colors practically jump off the surface of the panel. If summer comes, can fall be far behind?
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