Horizons North and South

I was once a free spirit soaring on an ever-expanding horizon.

Heaven and earth would sing and dance with wild passion along Southern Maryland's Saint Mary's River where I went to school. Each day proclaimed different words of wisdom in a color palette quite unlike the one before. Every theatrical sunset or somber, silvery mist sang a different song. The songs kept me company as I walked to classes, called out to me on a sailboat or kayak, and, sometimes, they would invite me to dance.

In Boston, both modern and historical structures guided me along streets that may have once been cow paths. I wasn't always surrounded by brick and cement, though. A necklace of green gems sparkled throughout the city where trees recounted stories of long ago. Their layers of color also provided different lenses through which to view the cares of the day.

When downtown, I could weave my way through old, narrow streets around buildings and people benumbed by the cold. In a few minutes, I'd find myself at the harbor, watching a different universe of colors giddily at play in the waves.  A further escape from the wearisome race of city life was just a boat ride away. Even if I had to stay on the shore, planes flying out of East Boston, yachts afloat on the textured waves, or renegade seagulls circling the area proclaimed freedom, harmonizing with the patriots who founded the city. The horizon was aglow with movement, as the sea and sky called out names of faraway lands as if to bring them within reach.

Walking outside my apartment in North Quincy, Massachusetts during September often brought a tantalizing waft of sea air. Rarely would I resist the urge to follow it for just a few blocks until I was greeted with a ribbon of blue, indigo, or battleship gray at Wollaston Beach. I would walk all the way down to the rocks on the southern end, the breeze whispering love songs as it tussled my hair. As far as beaches go, it wasn't the among most beautiful, and it was anything but clean, but it was a nearby escape where I could lift my eyes up and follow the shimmering path on the water as it reached heavenward.

Now I'm encased by mountains. They rise and fall with more drama and less grace than the waves of the inlets of the North Atlantic. They block off all scents and sounds of the sea. They surround Saint Joseph and the Fields, and a smattering of small towns throughout the Paraíba Valley. As they drape themselves across the horizon, they are criss-crossed by small forests of white cement high-rise buildings that try to reach the sky with brashness and raw arrogance, quite unlike the ephemeral shimmery paths that ran along the waterways of my past. These mountains shut me in, and won't be moved by any amount of faith I may be able to muster.

Needless to say, the ocean speaks more deeply to me than the mountains, and I feel lots of saudade for the landscapes that encompassed me during my formative years. Although the coast is only an hour away, it involves a descent down narrow, winding, mountain roads that my beach-averse husband doesn't enjoy driving on. That and the unavoidable current of Saturday classes make my beach visits a rarity. And, so, in an effort to find a bit of the same peace and comfort that natives to this area feel when looking up at the mountains, I've started painting them.

I'm fascinated by the intersecting lines that the mountains make when hit by different kinds of light throughout the day. My eyes are drawn to the eerie expanse of clouds as they stretch across the vast, open horizon. I find equal parts comfort and disquietude when I look at the buildings that stretch upwards. They stand tall, as if to raise a fist toward this sweeping domain that inundates the city with blistering sun, pounding rain, and theatrical lightning storms. I admire their audacity, and it almost forgives their lack of charm. And the trees here, delightfully distinct from the ones in the North, sing different songs from the same well of wisdom I've always known.

Working in watermedia (watercolor, gouache, and water-soluble wax crayons) and collage, I have been constructing composite images of the landscapes I knew and loved in the North, combined with the ones that surround me here in the South. I don't intend to represent a particular building or recognizable landscape in each image, but instead, my aim is to give viewers a simultaneous glimpse of two worlds at once. The jagged edges of collage suggest the jolting and sometimes discordant mental images that I've experienced.

This is very much a work in progress, because teaching takes up most of my time and creative energy during the week. These are some of my favorite experimental pieces I've done over the past year and a half. Out of necessity I've been working small, but that may change someday.

While slowly developing this new body of work, I have been learning to love my current surroundings, even while longing for the horizons from whence I came.