For Tracy Michele, who always sees them first.
"I wish you to consider that I have been speaking of what I wished to accomplish in these pictures, rather than what I have done; for I may have failed in these efforts. I should, nevertheless, be much gratified if you could see them ...."
- Thomas Cole, letter dated May 1828

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

but the sky is for all




"The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few ..... but the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not 'too bright, nor good for human nature's daily food'; it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust."
- John Ruskin, Modern Painters, 1843

I've been going through past sketches and studies to see what I can pick up on and develop further. Sometimes these little things will sit around for years and then all of a sudden the time comes where I pick one up and it starts me thinking. These are from 2005. I barely remember doing them (they were in a pile of others) but I must have done them on the spot, outside somewhere, after a rain storm, probably down on the Jersey shore. These little watercolor studies always have an immediacy and reality that I like and want to carry over into my more finished work.