The Five Seasons

“History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.” Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner, 1874.
In my paintings the photograph source becomes a space between reality and imagination with overlaps of past and present. In this set of five paintings characters of the American counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s inhabit Bruegel’s landscapes illustrating the passing of time as seasons. In both worlds individuals strive to organize themselves and to coexist within a set of ideals all under the dominating whims of greater natures. The figures, sometimes dwarfed by their surroundings and other times stretching the scale of their influence reflect our own uncertainty of our human force onto, and as part of, our landscape.

source images

Photo by Peter Simon captioned: “Jean Pepper takes a break from the annual ladies’ tea, badminton, and croquet tournament in the summer of 1971.”

Photo by Jeff Albertson captioned: “Woman in a peasant dress and other communards walking along a dirt road, Earth People’s Park, September 1971” from a series of photographs labeled “Earth People Park Norton, VT with G. Kimball ‘Bumma.

Photo by Kramer-Mathew Collections captioned: “Women Performing with the Monteverdi Players” from a series of images taken at Montague Farm Commune, July 1975.

Painting 'The Hay Harvest (Haymaking)' by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, oil on wood, 1565.