Part II: Cuyahoga National Park: Paintings, Writings

Painting that has abandoned the dogmas, subjectivism and human centered regimes of modern art is free to explore everything. Objective reality has returned and the whole world is open to explore anew. The modernist aesthetic is merely the corporate aesthetic. Gone now is the repressive cloak of irreality which curtained art for the last 80 or 90 years. Art was veiled behind the thick and meaningless narcissistic cloak of ultra avant garde art, which achieved so little.  We can now free ourselves to use skill again, love the splendor of real things and beings, and be intelligent. Gone is the obsession with the materials and tools of art alone.

Cuyahoga National Park-Paintings,Writings– Part 1

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 Part I

Introduction

What follows is the story of a place over 3-4 years in paint, 2011 to 2016.  These are a series of 40 or so mostly Plein Air paintings done in, or close to, Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP). It is a catalogue of places, trees, animals, birds, wildflowers, the river and tributaries, as well as some built structures and people who live or work there. In between the images are autobiographical reviews of  these years, as well as reflections on history and painting, thoughts on the environment, both in appreciation of it, and in criticism about how our society mistreats nature.