Hudson Valley - Capitol District
Altamont Hedgerow 46”x70” oil on canvas
The Capitol District region of the Hudson River Valley is where I was raised, and it has always felt like home. Having a weather eye on landscape—with an inherent curiosity about territory, I scouted the Hudson River’s embankments and countless tributaries, and discovered some truly consummate places, and I was drawn to many of them: beginning with the Hamlet of Guilderland Center, where as an adolescent I became fascinated and comfortable in nature . . . routinely roaming my grandfather’s woods, fields and hollows, and eventually painted there. Other associations included the Capitol City of Albany; the foothills of the Catskills; the wild Adirondack Mountains to the North; and the Confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers. All these places amplified a call for accepting a reputable art practice.
My very first independent studio in Albany was thrilling—having light-filled rooms and motivation for consistent art production with the city below. The studio was located a dozen blocks from the largely abandoned, mysterious collection of early Dutch-brick buildings, called The Pastures—a content-laden site, which drew me to work in Albany’s slum. I would eventually be drawing and painting there on-location for two years. City planners, wandering through the area (planning for its rehabilitation,) saw what I was up to and hired me to draw my own vision of a “restored” Pastures. The scope of visualizations increased with added commissions for rendering major Capitol Restoration projects (shown in portfolio below). The architectural work meant I would not become a starving artist. It was the Pastures which first drew me to Albany, after confronting such an astonishing and tragic civil record. I was determined to capture the Pasture’s dramatic, graphic, and ghostly condition before it completely disappeared. Drawing and painting among the Pastures culminated in over a hundred drawings and paintings on paper.
Moving westward from the Capitol, the Schoharie Valley was a heavenly environment for my young family—in our first house, and the rehabbing of an out-building for a studio.
A decade’s-worth of daily rambles with loaded pigments over countless fertile acres was heartening. Occasional excursions back across the Hudson to Historic Olana became an additional pursuit, where working there could not happen often-enough. Annual requests for my paintings to be represented in Olana’s Summer auctions was foundational for a career in art.
The Capitol District was more than a homeland, but a region of various and notable locations which I embraced over time, to be transformed through painting. My work as a painter became prominent throughout the area. Depicting spirited ideas of feeling, outline, and color are the embodied perceptions and emotions in my work. I felt I had a role to play, even minimally— contributing degrees of influence and beauty specific to this venerable region.
