Lewis Bryden: Landscapes
“For the past 350 years the farmers of my town, Hadley—as farmers in all the Pioneer Valley—have waited impatiently each spring for the ground to thaw so they can plow their fields. Thus begins the most hectic and delightful time of year, a period I call the Growing Season. From the first seeds in the ground to the final harvest in the fall, there is an abundance of outdoor activity that unites us all across the centuries. But it is more than just a time for crops. There are also the home gardens and their gardeners, and the blossoming of the parks and forests. The river and the local lakes, too, become places of activity after being long neglected in the winter. Everything is growing, seemingly—even the people. This is my favorite time of year, and I wanted to celebrate it in paint.”
— Lewis Bryden
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“Painting outdoors has provided some of the happiest moments of my life as an artist. Not only am I surrounded then by my subject, but I can actually feel its presence-the sun on my arms, the breeze at my back, the temperature of the air. These are the qualities that I try to make one feel in my paintings.
Sometimes we look at nature and we are fascinated to see how things move and change. However, there are other times when we look, and we wish that things could stay just as they are forever. Those are the moments that I know I have to make a painting.
Lately I’ve noticed that some natural scenes are in fact pointed out and enhanced by nature itself. So it is that trees or branches or rocks sometimes seem to be selecting a scene for me, as if they were frames. Sometimes even, the thing framed in the distance will at another time become the vantage point from which I can look back at where I was before, that now is the object in the distance. Our orthogonal world is to be echoed in the realm of nature. ”
— Lewis Bryden
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