Light in the North

Stillnesss- Smith Lake Summer Night  ©Kesler Woodward 2021    Acrylic on Canvas  30" x 40"

Many of my recent paintings feature the brief, luminous light of winter, but this time of year, as the days lengthen by the better part of an hour each week, I often find myself thinking about the light at the opposite pole of the seasons. The midnight light of summer is every bit as magical as the midday sunrises and sunsets of deep winter, and as so often, I'm painting out of recollection, and out of season.

Night Lights   ©Kesler Woodward 2021   Acrylic on Canvas   48" x 60"

Smith Lake is a beautiful body of water that is part of a 2000-acre arboretum on the University of Alaska campus, and the light on it in various seasons is one of my favorite subjects. We watch migrating waterfowl by the thousands congregate on it in spring, we ski over it in winter, and we run around it in summer. I like the the scruffy, determined black spruce that cling to life at its edges, the way the clouds after midnight are reflected in its surface, and the view across it to Ester Dome, which we run from campus to the top of and back each fall in the Equinox Marathon. 

A Thin Place   ©Kesler Woodward 2021   Acrylic on Canvas   24" x 30"

I'm dreaming of summer a bit, but I guess I'm not yet done with late winter night. Each new painting of this slightly eerie, liminal light seems to take on a life of its own as I work, independent of my initial desires. I paint the skies, the atmosphere, the light in these paintings last--after the landscape features have taken shape, so that the landscape will be bathed in and illuminated by the light, inseparable from it. So often, the skies and the light change what I thought the painting was about altogether, and things like this rift between heaven and earth occur.

Night Muse   ©Kesler Woodward 2021   Acrylic on canvas   24" x 30"

The moon is dim here almost half the year, in the continuous light of late spring, summer, and early fall, so I appreciate it all the more in winter. I watch it wax and wane with great delight, and when I travel, I notice how the features on its surface reorient, turning like a clock with my changing latitude.

Comments

[Kes Woodward]

Thank you, Erin! I've only ever included the moon in one painting before, I think--along with the sun, in a big painting called "Travelers" that was a personal homage and response to the opening lines of Matsuo Basho's great "Narrow Journey to the Interior"--one of my most beloved texts. It's scary to me, including such a not only universal, but too-often and too-lightly used image, and so these are the only two times in a half-century of serious painting that I've had a personal enough reason to allow myself to include it.

[Erin]

Oh goodness, both Thin Place and Night Muse are really breathtaking. I don't recall very many moon paintings of yours - someone very lucky will get to contemplate those magical places you've created.