Shall We Dance?

In a private collection

sold through Edgewater Gallery

While painting this painting I listened to several Anthony Trollope audiobooks, so I must admit my mind was steeped in the droll early Victorian world of manners. I’ve always loved the way a mountain ridge is suddenly sporting a butch haircut once the leaves have left the trees. There is a sense that these upright stiff hairs are standing at attention, watching what is going on below. And the early flowering trees along the hillside are in their finery, ready to show off.

In ‘Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?’ Mary Oliver says

Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia
   then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

I so love Mary Oliver!