Spring Dreams

Spring Dreams  ©Kesler Woodward 2011  Acrylic on canvas  16" x 20" (image)

Two things happen for me, and in my work, virtually every late winter and early spring. My colors get brighter, and I visit my favorite places in the nearby woods--south-facing slopes where the strengthening sunlight rakes the forest with light and shadows.

The colors in my paintings get brighter throughout every winter, as I long for the saturated hues that the returning light and eventual thaw and new growth will bring. Often I ignore true color entirely, allowing myself to fantasize that the land itself is dreaming boldly of a surreal, riotous spring. At the very least, I exaggerate the strengths of the shadows and the colors in the trees of the boreal forest.

One place I find myself, floundering in still-deep snow, nearly every spring is the south-tilting hillside of beautiful woods just below the University of Alaska Museum of the North, on the West Ridge of the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. I must have made a couple of dozen paintings, over the last 30 years, within a 100-yard radius of this very spot. And so again this year, I am struck by and need to pay homage to the beauty of that hillside, those woods, and the clear light of the North.

 

Comments

[Toronto Home Renovations]

I long for the saturated hues that the returning light and eventual thaw and new growth will bring.I am struck by and need to pay homage to the beauty of that hillside, those woods, and the clear light of the North.