Buttercup Time

from the Inside, Looking Out series, aka Down the Intervale #6, oil on canvas, 11″ x 14″    $154

June 2010. Just as I was beginning to paint from the natural world again, I spent a week in Dayton. Only two paintings emerged during that brief time; naive attempts to capture the glory of the late-spring landscape awash with buttercups, a sea of pale yellow stretching from the fields at my feet, to the distant fields bordering the Saco River intervale. These paintings were my second mature attempts to portray the magic of my childhood playing fields. Melville describes my quest, and evolving vocation, in the following words, from Loomings, Chapter 1 of Moby Dick, where he writes at length about the eternal human draw to water , to rivers and the sea. “But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco.” A year ago during the first incarnation of this Adventus series I quoted the above line, after having read Moby Dick for the first time in my life while in Alaska that summer. Moved by Melville’s eloquence I declared: “I am that artist!” Well that remains to be seen; Time and the River keep flowing; the jury is still out on whether or not I fulfill that particular bill yet. Nevertheless I keep working to improve my skills and vision every time I  go north, drawn back to the timelessness of  seasonal change: Sun Rise, Sun Set; Spring Ahead, Fall Back. Below the other painting from that week, Down the Intervale #5, oil on pine board, 10″ x 30″  –  now in the collection of Clark & Georgianna Cole.