Orison ©Kesler Woodward 2020 Acrylic on Canvas 36" x 24
In this strange, uneasy time of pandemic and social unrest, I seem to be drawn in my work again and again to the hushed calm of twilight. We are blessed in the Far North with long hours of twilight, not just in summer but in every season of the year.
Here in Fairbanks we have 70 straight days each spring and summer when it doesn't get dark--when it is continuously either broad daylight or "civil twilight." Civil twilight is when the sun is less than 6º below the horizon, and you can still see details and read a newspaper out-of-doors. In the wee hours of the night, dusk and dawn are prolonged as the sun slides briefly just below the horizon and re-emerges soon after.
Canticle ©Kesler Woodward 2020 Acrylic on Canvas 20" x 16"
I find the relative darkness of the deep forest comforting in these long days of bright sunlight, and at this time of year I paint spruces as often, or even more frequently, than the birches and aspens I so love. Individual birches are a continuing wonder to me, but spruces shelter, shade, and provide both a welcome contrast to the brilliance of the day and a more dramatic stage for the sun's rise and fall.
Solstice ©Kesler Woodward 2020 Acrylic on Canvas 24" x 36"
Even on the winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, when here in Fairbanks we get only 3 hours and 42 minutes of true daylight, and the sun struggles just one and a half degrees above the southern horizon at its zenith, we have almost six and a half hours of combined daylight and civil twilight, and the gloaming is just as beautiful as it is in summer. This is a view of the winter Solstice from the broad Tanana River just outside town, when the brief sun colors the deeply frozen, snow-drifted river and backlights the dramatic bluff overlooking it.
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