A Day at the Museum
February 24, 2017
I wanted to stop by and share a story and some pics about some recent inspiration. A few weeks ago Ren and I took a trip to the Joslyn Art Museum, which was really fun for both of us. We spent most of the morning in the Art Exploration area and checking out tunnels and water fountains, but after lunch we did a stroll through a few of the exhibits and I found myself really drawn to the large landscape paintings.
It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with tree lines and pines, but I’ve never really been excited by the Hudson River School style paintings until recently (check out the link to the left for some samples). In school I would have told you that I respected them, but that they just weren’t “my thing.” I thought they were too realistic, too precise… not the sort of images that got my attention.
Just keep in mind, at that time coffee also wasn’t “my thing.” How times change. Ha. Years later, I see an entirely different type of magic in the immensity of the scenes and the constant play with light and shadow. When I taught American Literature we read “Rip Van Winkle” every year and these paintings take me back into stories like that - the harsh reality of colonists carving out a life in the mountains, but coupled with a playful fantasy of being in such an immense place and really having no idea what or who else is out there. It had to feel a little like landing on a new planet. Now when I look at these paintings I see all of that in addition to the paint and it’s just really exciting. And the shadows are incredible - that’s just something I’ll never get over.
After a lot of browsing and all of the patience the average two-year old could muster, I stopped in the gift shop and picked up these two postcards. I have been staring at them on my table ever since. The week we went I was already having a lovefest with my indigo watercolor paint, so these two just drew me in. Obviously I’m not remotely looking to recreate scenes like this, but I’ve enjoyed thinking about the way they used light and shadow and trying to experiment with how I use fog and steam when I work through pine tree scenes.
