Prints

This is Lancaster County, my home base, at its winter best. The haystacks are a good sign that this is likely an Amish farm. Therefore, the title more or less wrote itself.

By August, the garden has passed its peak and is winding down. The daylilies are gone, leaving only their foliage as a backdrop for the last hollyhocks and blue sage to combine and give me summer’s last bouquets.

On Maryland’s Eastern Shore lies the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. It is filled with marshes like the one depicted in this print, and in Fall it rings wildly with the cries of Canada geese as they gather for the great reunion that starts their winter in this location. Clearly the geese know a good thing when they see it.

When I developed this print I was trying to focus on the shading of trees as a way to sculpt the landscape. The title was drawn from the fact that I inserted a number of tiny details in the scene. As with many Brueghel paintings, the longer you look, the more action you see. This picture holds a bicycle race, a plowing man, swimmers in a quarry, sunbathers on a beach, rowers in sculls, picnickers, and a kite flier, all nestled among the trees.

From the moment these bulbs first poke a tentative cone of a nose through the soil in early spring till the start of their bloom time in August, these white lilies garner all manner of attention. Sprouts are bathed with a mixture to repel lily beetles. Regular inspections and doses of deer spray are laced with words of encouragement, and in some instances stakes are installed to support wavering stems that get too tall.  By bloom time it feels as though a holiday is in the offing, and like marchers in a July 4th parade, each specimen stages a celebration, offering noble blooms that provide a drawing challenge and fragrance at dawn and dusk that makes my heart sing.

No hyacinth blooms in December, but fortunately one can find them at the market at times. This one came from Canada, and I was most grateful both for the visual treat it offered and the heavenly fragrance it provided to my living room for at least a week. I was particularly drawn to the greenish tone to its buds which, combined with the deep blue of the blossoms, offered a really wondrous color scheme.

When I first visited a friend in Francescas, a tiny village in the Gascogne region of southern France, it was March and the air was that brisk, invigorating gift featured in early Spring. We regularly walked the roads among newly-planted fields. In some cases rows were covered by hooped lengths of plastic, turned blue in hue by the sky’s reflection. When the wind caught these temporary greenhouses they rippled like waves, looking as though they were a giant Christo installation. I recorded the scene in my journal, and from that drawing this print was born.

One particularly cool summer, the tomatoes seemed unable to get ripe on the vine, so they were ensconced on the window skill. With the backdrop of the back of the kitchen settee and a view through the vegetation, this scene seemed to need recording, along with the promise of ripe tomatoes.

Our neighbor, when we lived in Oxford, Maryland, was a gracious southern lady named Grace. Behind her house, at the end of her yard was a small garage that could never have housed a horse or car, but certainly had a great deal of classic architectural character. By its door stood a gathering of hollyhocks and larkspur. In concert with the pale blue paint on the garage, they made an irresistibly appealing annual bouquet I decided to record one summer.