The artwork in this series reflects my interest in sharing experiences of close and thoughtful observations from several sites I visited and photographed this year.  The concept of “Close Looking” is based on carefully engaging our observations, senses and memories, opening us up to new possibilities in seeing and appreciating by looking past the outside noise and truly taking in all that is before us with wonder and awe.

I’ve been reading and studying the lives and work of Wolf Kahn, Joan Mitchell, Joan Eardley, Helen Frankenthaler, Brian Rutenberg, Emily Mason, Fairfield Porter, and others from the abstract expressionist movement as well as many abstract painters of today. A recently taken workshop with painter Stuart Shils raised thoughtful questions, notably, “Why did I stop to look at this?” “What am I responding to?”   In discovering what we are attracted to, we pay clearer attention, slowing down to observe and deepen our connections to what is before us.   

This year I took an artistic journey to Vermont, to see and experience the Eastern terrain that inspired Wolf Kahn, my favorite abstract landscape painter. My first stop was at the beautiful Mt Holyoke River bend, where Thomas Cole, (1801-1848), a Hudson River School Painter, painted “The Oxbow at Mt. Holyoke”. The Biography of Wolf Kahn by Justin Strong shows a photo of Wolf setting up his easel to paint the same bend in the Connecticut River, working one hundred years after Thomas Cole’s artwork which now hangs in MoMa in NYC. I became obsessed with experiencing and painting that same scene.

During my travels I practiced looking deeply. I stopped by the roadside and introduced myself to farmers; explaining my journey. I heard stories of Wolf Kahn and his life from farmers and neighbors while discovering some farmlands and scenes that he had been inspired to paint and draw with pastels.  A bonus was standing near these fields, smelling the clean air, feeling the sunshine, embracing the wind, hearing the birds chirp and the far away sounds of tractors plowing fields. I was entranced by seeing the light through the leaves casting shadows on barn buildings. My sketchbook stayed in the car. Instead, I took photographs, capturing everything in my limited time frame.  I observed deeply while documenting each discovered scene with my camera and my memory, focusing on small details of texture, fragments of color, organic shapes, all the intimate essences of place.

Near the end of my trip, I visited the summer home of Wolf and Emily Mason to experience first-hand the beautiful sweet feelings of country life.  I sketched what I could and photographed more, happy for references to look at later.  I was inspired by both Wolf’s and Emily’s work, created from visual inspirations of what was before them, and I felt their close looking. They surrounded their family with gardens and hillsides of wildflowers in a rich farm life within an ever-changing atmosphere and shared it with the world in their artworks.

Sitting in the artists’ dining room at the end of my visit, looking outside towards the mountains, I enjoyed the grove of lovely trees that they saw every day, and took in all the small details that were expanded upon in their work.  Upon my return to Colorado, I went searching for similar inspiration by taking the time to focus and look closely at what is before my eyes, around me, in front of me. This series of work is dedicated to those close looking moments we all have before us to explore and experience.