I make these paintings because I love the process. There is no place I’d rather be than out in the landscape focusing on a subject and absorbing all that makes it real: color, shape, texture, pattern and also sounds and smells in the air.
These paintings chronicle a specific place at a specific time. Because I’ve returned to many sites often I’ve become very aware that nothing stays the same.
Last summer was wet, this summer was dry. That meant there were places this year I could walk into that were under water last year. Shallow ponds disappeared.
Trees grow and die, buildings cave, silos are taken down, farmers plant new fields, new construction happens. Significantly, changes in our climate have meant changes in the landscape. First and last frost dates have moved. I hear peepers earlier and the land is lusher later.
Landscape paintings have become records of our changing world. I think about Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School of Art, America’s first native school of painting that celebrated our country’s prosperity and limitless resources. Even during his lifetime Cole wrote despairingly that the landscape no longer looked like his paintings, trees having been cut down to allow for railroads and development.
So with the passage of time my paintings are visual records of what surrounds us now and of the fragility of our land.
Mary Padgett, October 2022