If you're in Anchorage on Friday, June 1, I hope you'll come say hello at the opening of a solo exhibition of my work at Georgia Blue Gallery. Thirteen of my new paintings will be on view that evening, and for the remainder of the month of June.
Chorus ©Kesler Woodward 2018 Acrylic on Canvas 24" x 36"
Chorus is testimony to my ongoing fascination with bright, warm color in the white of winter. As I worked on it for many days, I completely forgot, at one point, what season I was painting. I told Dorli one day that the new painting in my studio was starting to come together, and when she asked what season it was, without thinking I replied, "It's a brilliant fall scene," before remembering that it was actually about the chorus of light that transfigures the boreal forest when the sun rises in winter, and I look directly into its glow.
I have more paintings than usual in my studio right now, as I'm about to ship the thirteen newest ones to Anchorage for my show at Georgia Blue Gallery next month. I welcomed a trio of friends visiting from Anchorage to my studio yesterday, and one of them said, "I usually don't like winter paintings, especially this time of year, as they're so cold, but although almost every painting in your studio is a winter scene, they are all full of such warm light." Many of our friends complain bitterly this time of year about the long winters, and the snow that lingers through April, so I'm always glad that both Dorli and I love the winters--however long--at least as much as the summers. I guess for both of us, it's because this, rather than cold and dark, is the way it looks to us as we run on the snowy trails at first light for almost seven full months of the year.
Taiga Trail ©Kesler Woodward 2018 Acrylic on Canvas 20" x 16"
One of the things I do like about late spring is the way the shadows of the trees deepen so dramatically in density and definition in the stronger light. Anyone who has spent years in this forest, paying attention to the light that changes not just month by month, but day by day, might well recognize that despite the still deep, unbroken snow on this trail, these are the shadows of spring, not winter.
Rampant ©Kesler Woodward 2018 Acrylic on Canvas 48" x 24"
Rampant speaks to my seemingly endless fascination with the individuality of birch trunks, my occasional need to break away from the intricate and tightly-controlled way I've been working and indulge myself in thick, juicy paint, and the way my paintings take on a life of their own as I work on them. This canvas began life as a smooth, almost flesh-pink torso, but without much warning turned inexorably into this far wilder, rawer, scarred-but-proud, still-rampant figure.
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