Camden Hills, Maine, Andrew Wyeth.

“I could probably just paint a hill for the rest of my life.”
— Andrew Wyeth

Francis Guy, Winter Scene in Brooklyn, ca. 1819-1820.

Paul Huet, Landscape in the Forest at Compiègne, 1826-1828.

Gustave Courbet, The Edge of the Pool (Au Bord de l'Etang), 1867.

Louis Rémy Mignot, Niagara, 1866.

Charles-François Daubigny, An Apple Orchard, 1871-1878.

Frederic Edwin Church, Tropical Scenery, 1873.

Winslow Homer, In the Mountains, 1877.

George Wesley Bellows, A Morning Snow--Hudson River, 1910.

W. Cole Brigham, Charles Merrill Memorial Window, ca. 1910.

Israel Litwak, Crawford Notch, New Hampshire, 1951.

Randy Dudley, Gowanus Canal from 2nd Street, 1986.

Pat Steir, Everlasting Waterfall, 1989.

Valerie Hegarty, Fallen Bierstadt, 2007.

A couple of side notes:

The site of Dudley’s painting of the Gowanus canal is about a block from my house. Dudley’s work reminds me quite a bit of Rackstraw Downes, both in subject and in style. I’d like to find more information about him.

Also, Valerie Hegerty has a fantastic edition available from 20×200 which benefits the Brooklyn Museum.

A move down the block doesn’t sound like much, but this transition has definitely shifted my worldview a bit. Maybe it’s just a matter of priorities; moving out of a cramped apartment into a house we own is a big change, and it’s taking some time to adjust. I haven’t had a back yard in more than twelve years, for example, and there are days when all I want to do is stare at this:

It’s not much, yet, but it’s ours. There’s a fig tree back there that’s just getting ripe, with one tempting branch hanging over our fence. Guess what I had for breakfast? And yes, the house came with its very own cast-iron sink birdbath.

And then there’s the work! Nobody told me how much work was involved in keeping a 100-year-old house from collapsing into a pile of bricks. Lets just say that a lot of creative thinking has gone into keeping this place standing over the years, and my wife and I are having a wonderful time unraveling all of it.

In the midst of this packing and unpacking, I have had some time to think about photography and where it is taking me. I started running this summer, mostly through the waterfront neighborhoods of Gowanus and Red Hook, and I’ve started to become interested in photographing the neighborhood again. I’ve photographed around here before (I put a good amount of time into urban landscape photography last summer, for example) but I think I’m seeing things a little differently now and have some new ideas.

One artist I’ve been particularly inspired by over the last month or so is Rackstraw Downes. Downes is a plein-air landscape painter who has done a lot of urban work, including several paintings in my neighborhood. He’s not the easiest artist to follow; his work is quite scattered online, and I don’t hear about much in the way of exhibitions. Interest does seem to be picking up steam, though, and he had a few exhibitions this summer and a new catalog of his work that is at the top of my wishlist.

I came across two articles on Downes last month, one in the Wall Street Journal and one in the New York Times. The images accompanying the Times article are particularly good. I also came across this interview with Downes from 2004, which includes a painting from the park in Red Hook where I run most days. In fact, the grain terminal in that painting was the subject of my very first large format photograph!

I guess you could call this Cézanne 2.0. What’s the photographic equivalent of Cubism? Can you do it with a straight photograph, or does it have to be manipulated?

Landscape near Hubbelrath, 1969, Gerhard Richter

Well, Millstone and Cistern Under Trees, 1892

There are quite a few Cézannes that I would consider favorites, but seeing this painting in particular at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia earlier this year had an incredibly profound effect on me.

Edward Hopper, Road in Maine, 1914