Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College (Part I)

Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College, Lynchburg , VA

I had the wrong major in college. Fortunately the campus art museum (Allen Memorial Art Museum) woke me up to what I was meant to do- paint. What a powerful impact even a smaller museum can have on a young artist.

That's part of why I drove down from Baltimore to the Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA last week. They have an Edward Hopper landscape I needed to see (more later), but I was intrigued by what I'd seen  of their collection on-line as well.

Thomas Cole, Corway Peak, New Hampshire, oil on canvas, 1844

I'm a little different from many contemporary artists in that I've always looked for insight and inspiration from the artists who've gone down the path before me. When you're starting out you need guidance.  Allen Art Museum's giant color field painting by Larry Poons pushed me to explore what color could be made to do. I painted dozens of brilliantly colored abstractions my first years at the easel. Frank Stella and Rothko became my best friends.

Later on I steered my course towards realism and landscape painting. 19th century American landscape painting especially seemed to know my name. Maier Museum has a particularly strong oil by Thomas Cole, who along with others founded the American landscape painting movement. 

Maier's Cole marvelously contrasts a sharp rocky escarpment against a mountain wrapped in the most delicate blanket of  glowing atmosphere. I love art that plays opposites off against each other like this. In all our personal lives we're confronted with colliding opposing forces. This painting by Cole reminds us the damage doesn't have to be permanent, sometimes things can be returned to a place of resolution and balance.

Speaking of balance, perhaps my favorite of the 19th century landscape painters is John Frederick Kensett. Hanging next to Maier's Cole is one of the most serene shoreline paintings imaginable. As a kid growing up on the shore of Lake Ontario I'd see scenes of elegant stillness like what Kensett offers up to us here. He nails a feeling I know all of us carry inside. His painting reminds us to touch that feeling often. 

 John F. Kensett, On the Connecticut Shore, oil on canvas, 1871

And here's the Hopper painting I expressly made the trip to see. 

Edward Hopper, Mrs. Scott's House, oil on canvas, 1932

When Edward Hopper first visited Cape Cod in 1930 he was fascinated by the huge rolling sand dunes he found in the Truro. This oil was painted about 200 yards from the spot where two years later would build the studio he and Jo Hopper would live in for the next three decades.

Seeing the painting in the flesh it's striking how much attention the artist paid to the seemingly empty dunes. Hopper carefully inbued each dune its own unique surface, as if each had something different to say. To me the back two dunes look like they're getting ready to rise up and start moving. I think the upward arching silhouettes they share give them an extra animated presence.  Remarkable painting!

In a couple of days I'll post comments on more of the Maier's collection.