OTHER LOCATIONS
Artist reflections on landscape painting:
“I have always been drawn to nature and primarily the landscape as a source for inspiration in my painting. In a book I read many years ago by David Steindl-Rast, titled The Music of Silence, he describes Gregorian chant and its transcendental call to enter the eternal now, where our souls crave communion with the divine. Modifying his text slightly it also offers a good description of the joy and value of landscape painting.”
‘The contemplation of nature, with its beauty and creative order, speak to our hearts today because it is a universal call to enter the now: to stop, to listen, and to heed the message of this moment. It fills our souls which long for peace and connection to the ultimate source of meaning and value.’
Pope St. John Paul II in his encyclical to artists has called attention to the need for the artist’s work to help “affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal”.
Stating the importance of maintaining beauty in our culture, Bishop Robert Barron says ““Begin with the beautiful, which leads you to the good, which leads you to the truth.”
Oil on canvas, 12” x 16”
Fall colors on the trees signal the end of the vacation season. Many residents begin to close up their homes and depart for the winter.
Oil on canvas, 30” x 24”
The beauty of this fall afternoon is accentuated by its historical significance. Of this place, poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "here once the embattled farmers stood and fired the shot heard round the world".
Oil on canvas, 30” x 60”
(Burial site of American artist, Andrew Wyeth)