Bittersweet Crown

This is a painting of a windbreak along one of the fields of Hadlow Farm in Sherman Connecticut, part of the Naromi Land Trust. The break is crowned by a beautiful invader, a heavy growth of bittersweet, a glorious blaze of orange, topping the grey and brown tangle of bare branches. The trees carry their burden like a talent, an unbidden asset that they're obliged to display. It weighs them down, but makes them beautiful.

"Just Looking: Essays on Art" by John Updike, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1989 has insightful and entertaining writing about a wide variety of painters and sculptors. The last essay in the book "Writers and Artists" is especially meaningful, today. Prior to the existence of the internet and blogging artists, the best of us were adept at expressing ourselves with pen and paper, lines on a page that formed either letters or symbols conveying meaning. Today, the internet is simply a public space in which to busque, a kiosk for posting. The best of us are still succeeding because of an ability to convey meaning to a broad audience, through written word and visual image. - Nancy Boudreau

Friends and patrons - you can help, by passing this website on to others that might enjoy the art and thoughts expressed here. Improving "traffic" on the blog, leaving comments, starting dialogue is valuable food for thought, fueling the development of ideas. Your input, is as they used to say, "as good as gold" and an essential part of the artistic process.

This painting is about 5" x 7" acrylic on gessoed mat board, protected in a cream-colored mat. As with all these little studies, the text above is handwritten on the back of the painting, which is also signed and dated.