The French Connection 2006

In June 2006 in Red Cloud NE, this series was presented at a Willa Cather conference which focused on the French connection.

Excerpts from the Artist's Statement:

This Willa Cather Conference focuses on two of her books: O Pioneers! and Shadows On The Rock. Both of which provide a French Connection. Each of the paintings in this art series reference a quote from one of these books.

Those who are familiar with my work will note that some of the paintings in this series display a new artistic expression - something other than the prairie landscape. When Willa Cather went to Europe and spent time in Paris and Provence, she was inspired to explore a new topic in her writing - something in addition to her prairie novels.
 

A writer talks with words. An artist talks with paint. I invite you to look at the colors and shapes and lines and read these paintings.

"Without order our lives would be disgusting, like those of the poor savages. At home, in France, we have learned to do all these things in the best way, and we are conscientious and that is why we are called the most civilized people in Europe and other nations envy us." - Madame Auclair to Cecile in Shadows on the Rock

                       French Traveler, 15x221/2 in; oil on canvas

"That foot will not come back." -Pommier, the cobbler, to Cecile in Shadows on the Rock.

"The great pine forests, across the river and on the western sky-line, were no longer bronze, but black. The only colours in the world were black and white and grey, - bewildering variations of clouded white and grey." - Shadows on the Rock

"Now the long closed season was upon them, and there would be no letters, no word of any kind from France for seven, perhaps eight months." - Shadows on the Rock

"Between the storms the weather was grey, with armies of dark clouds moving across the wide sky, and the bitter wind always blowing." - Shadows on the Rock

"He sat forgotten on the back of the chair, attached to his master's belt by a long cord. He seemed of a sullen disposition - there was nothing gay and bird-like about him." - Shadows on the Rock

"It was a strange thing, indeed, that a man of his mild and thoughtful disposition, city-bred and most conventional in his habits, should be found on a gray rock in the Canadian wilderness." - Shadows on the Rock

"As Auclair was returning home after midnight, under the glitter of the hard bright northern stars, he felt for the first time wholly and entirely cut off from France; a helpless exile in a strange land." - Shadows on the Rock

"I do not belong to the old time. I have got to live on into a new time; and you are all I have in the world." - Cecile to her father in Shadows on the Rock

"It was the country that was the hero, or the heroine." - a quote from Willa Cather found in the introduction to O Pioneers!

"On every side the brown waves of the earth rolled away to meet the sky." - O Pioneers!

"It was still a wild thing that had its ugly moods, and no one knew when they were likely to come, or why." - O Pioneers!

The variegated fields are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray." - O Pioneers!

               French Church; 22 x 28 in; Oil on canvas

"The church looked powerful and triumphant there on its eminence, so high above the rest of the landscape, with miles of warm color lying at its feet." - O Pioneers!

          On Your Own; 22 x 28 in; Oil on canvas

"I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do." - Marie to Emil in O Pioneers!