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April, 2004
Opening reception, April 2.
Many of the paintings in this show were.done on location in Ireland, Quebec, the New England seacoast and mountains, as well as our familiar Finger Lakes. Some were done in the studio from the wealth of sketches and photographs that I bring home from my travels. The show will contain small oil sketches -- such as "Yvonne Painting at the St. Lawrence" and "Mount Mansfield in the Morning Mist" that stop a moment in time with quick gestural brush work -- as well as much larger paintings such as "Dunquin" that present a panoramic view of the Irish coast in which the brush work takes a back seat to an exquisite array of subtle color shifts.
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The idea of traveling with paint started many years ago when my brother asked me to house-sit while his family went away one June. The quiet of the rural Adirondack setting provided the needed time away from life as it is formed by the daily grind, in which painting sometimes gets pushed to the farthest fringes of the day. The time spent alone, with nothing to do but paint was refreshing, invigorating, and productive. In subsequent years, I transported my paint by canoe to an island in the middle of Racquette Lake, by car to the Maine coast, the shores of Lake Huron, and the St. Lawrence, and by plane to Ireland. Back in Ithaca, I can often be spotted at the edge of a field painting our familiar rolling hills and watercourses.Painting from nature is an act of immersion, a dissolution of self that nurtures and sustains a complex life.
Each geographical location provides fresh inspiration, as well as new problems to solve. Each place has a different palette of color and geometry to represent its unique landscape. In Colorado, I once found myself looking for an art shop so that I could buy more colored pencils -- the greens of the Northeast could not represent the blue-, grey-, and brown-greens of the sage and cacti. In Ireland I realized that the fabled 40 shades of green were really brown and yellow, blue and purple, not green at all. In Maine I had to learn to distinguish between the bold blocks of gneiss and the rounded forms of black basalt. The immense distances of the Adirondack Mountains required new skills in atmospheric perspective. Dealing with terrain and climate poses challenges.
You can see a selection of work at www.ozolins.com
The show will run April 1-25. Please visit.
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