Three Graces ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 36" x 48"
I have just returned from Reno, Nevada, where my latest solo exhibition of 16 new paintings opened with a terrific reception at Stremmel Gallery on February 8. I am so grateful to be able to show my work in that big, beautiful, museum-like space, and to have my work represented by the outstanding and supportive people there. A number of paintings in the exhibition have already been claimed by collectors, but the full exhibition will be up through March 9. You can see the gallery's online catalog of the exhibition here.
Since shipping the last paintings for that exhibition more than a month ago, I have of course been back in the studio and hard at work. I go back and forth, over the years, between painting in acrylics and painting in oils, and for the first time in almost a decade, I've started working again in oils. For the last month I've been coming in from the studio late every night, saying to Dorli, "I'd almost forgotten what a joy it is to push thick, sensual oil paint around on large canvases. I'm having such a good time!"
I've painted "birch portraits" like these for more than forty years, continually amazed by the variety and beauty of these trees as I walk and run the trails of the boreal forest. I paint other subjects--mountains, skies, the light of dawn and dusk, and more--but sooner or later I always return to these beautiful trees. They have long taken the place of people in my paintings—in their individuality, their strength, their vulnerability…in the way what happens to them in their lives is written in their “skin.”
Olden Dances ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 48" x 60"
But I also love the other trees in the northern forest--spruces, larches, poplars, and especially the aspens that are as plentiful as the birches surrounding our home. Many people here think of all the trees in our local forest, and all the trees in my paintings, as birches. But comparing this big (4 ft. x 5 ft.) painting of bold aspen trunks, Olden Dances, with the slender birches of Three Graces speaks directly, I think, to the quite different character of these mainstays of the boreal forest.
The leaves of aspens, which the ancients called "Whispering Trees," tremble in our summer winds, and their tall trunks sway gently, dance slowly, even in the near-total calm of our long winters. I think they are dreaming of the coming spring.
Cloths of Heaven ©Kesler Woodward 2023-24 Oil on Canvas 48" x 60"
