Alleluia ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Acrylic on canvas 36" x 48"
I have been hard at work since my last post, and I have images of a number of new paintings to share. These and virtually all of my available work from the last year will be on exhibit next month in a big solo show of my paintings opening February 8 at Stremmel Gallery in Reno, Nevada. I had a very successful show at that outstanding gallery three years ago, and I feel so fortunate to have them representing my work.
In the past couple of months, I have been surprised to find myself painting mountains. It continues to bewilder me that I have so little control over what I paint. The control I can and do exercise is to go to my studio every day and go to work, but it always comes as a surprise to me what I find myself painting.
The light in these new paintings is much like that in the forests I have been painting for the last couple of years. It's early morning, or dusk, or evening--those lingering hours of twilight that we enjoy here in the North in every season of the year. Alleluia, my first painting of this new year, is for now the culmination of the new series--a larger canvas than the others, with dramatic twilight on steep, rocky peaks that rise out of endless fields of snow.
A Mountain Epiphany ©Kesler Woodward 2023 Acrylic on canvas 24" x 24"
A Mountain Epiphany led the way to painting Alleuia. In this smaller painting I embraced color well beyond the naturalistic to express my joy at finding my way into these new mountains of substance and spirit.
All the Light ©Kesler Woodward 2023 Acrylic on canvas 20" x 24"
Each of these new mountain paintings is my attempt to capture a different hour, or just a different few minutes, on these surreal peaks. In All the Light, it is nearly gone, casting only a faint, subtle, lingering glow on the side of the mountaintop facing the sun, which illuminates for a moment more the thin clouds high above it.
Heavenly Light ©Kesler Woodward 2023 Acrylic on canvas 24" x 24"
Before and between these mountain paintings, I've continued to paint the no less dramatic but more intimate light of the North Woods. Out of the Dark and Heavenly Light speak to two very different moods in the boreal forest--each of those moods engendered by the liminal light of the North.
Out of the Dark ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Acrylic on canvas 20" x 10"
