vicissitude

available through Edgewater Gallery

The view from a camp at Thompson’s Point in Charlotte, Vermont looks across Farmers Bay to Long Point. This is part of a continuing series of paintings of this view — my opportunity to think about the space between regretting the past and worrying about the future.

Paying close attention to what is here, now, is especially challenging with a body of water as the wind moves across the surface and the light plays with your mind. The complexities of Long Point’s gentle hills, with Buck Mountain and Snake Mountain in the distance, contrasted with the simple grass foreground of the water’s edge. For me, the heart of the painting has been in the middle ground, that elusive space of the in-between.

Buddhism’s eight vicissitudes are in my mind as our political and social structures are tested. pleasure and pain
gain and loss
fame and disrepute
praise and blame

All things must pass.