Day Dreams and Night Visions (2023-present)
Day Dreams and Night Visions
This new body of work began in early spring of 2023 and was primarily painted outdoors in one secluded wooded spot at the water's edge at Cedarmere, the former Roslyn Harbor NY country estate of prominent 19th-century poet William Cullen Bryant. Every day brought a different experience and encounter: new flowers blooming, butterflies fluttering, curious birds observing, invasive lanternflies falling on my head, hummingbirds chasing each other and feasting on the jewelweed blossoms, cattails swaying, the white birches standing like ghosts overlooking their riparian realm. Days when the sky turned orange and nights when the full moon rose orange – painting every day among the milkweed, butterflies and bamboo became intense and surreal. At night, I started to paint in my dreams, and upon waking would go into the studio and paint my night visions. The daytime en plein air paintings evolved into otherworldly landscapes, “ecstatic expressions”, as the American artist Charles Burchfield, known for his visionary watercolor landscapes, would have called them. This transformation from day to night, from observation to dream, and the processes of looking out and looking within, was infused within my work.
