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: “This is the place on Martha’s Vineyard where we spent the summer of ‘70 almost entirely free of clothes. It’s just escaping on the run.”

Photo by Bettmann Archive titled “Murdered Reverend James Reeb’s Memorial and captioned: “Nearly 30,000 persons gathered on Boston Common, to attend memorial services for martyred Reverend James Reeb, 38, of Dorchester, who was killed in Selma, Alabama some time after he had participated in a voter registration march. Services were held from Parkman Bandstand.”

Photo by Roy Finestone titled “Nina Keller, her mother and an unidentified woman, Johnson Pature Commune, August 1969.”

Painting 'The Harvesters' by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, oil on wood, 1565.