Light in the North

Blessing  ©Kesler Woodward 2017   acrylic on canvas   20" x 16" (image)

When people who don't know my work ask me what I paint, I often tell them that I paint "big abstract paintings that happen to look like birch trees." And if most people who know my work well were asked what I paint, they would probably say "birch trees," or "the Northern forest." But more and more I realize, and should probably acknowledge, that what I really paint is light--"Light in the North."

We are blessed, in this subarctic landscape, to have extraordinary light all year-round. The shallow angle at which the sun wheels around the sky at 64º North latitude means that in every season, we get hours of the kind of magical twilight that is fleeting in most of the settled world. The rising sun, struggling to crest the southern horizon on a midwinter morning, looks and feels like a blessing. And the light in the treetops, when the ground is in shadow, always seems to me a kindly reminder of the day that's just gone and the sun that will come again.

Kindly Light  ©Kesler Woodward 2017   acrylic on canvas   24" x 30" (image)

 

 

Comments

[Carol Crump Bryner]

It's very true about painting the light. And you do it so well. I love the light in both of these paintings. I, like you, have always thought we live with a special light up here, and that we appreciate it so much more than folks "outside" do. It can be such a strong light making defined and energetic shadows, or it can be kindly, like in your painting "Kindly Light," a term I never really thought about before. Thanks, as always Kes, for your lovely post.

[Kes Woodward]

Thank you, Erin! I often see and always love the images in your posts under that lovely title, "An Apprentice to Light."

[Erin]

Oh yes, the light. I often feel like the most honest way to talk about my poetry is to say, "I am an apprentice to light." Though some days, I am an apprentice to mud, or wind, or crows. Just about any shift or dapple can catch my attention.