The Art of Winding Roads Essay

 The Art of Winding Roads
5 American, 1 Irish/American, 1 British, and 1 French Artists,
born between 1882 and 1956

by 4 men and 4 women.

1
One of my favorite all time paintings... -Bruce
Study of Trees
La route tournante / The Winding Road
Paul Cezanne, (1839-1906), French
Oil on canvas, 19" x 25" (w x h), circa 1904
The Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA

Source, Museum notes edited:
Cezanne's Study of Trees depicts depth on a flat canvas. This was the focus for him during most of his career. Energetically applied diagonal brush strokes slice the space, producing the suggestion of movement in and out of depth. Dashed lines define the tree trunks on either side of a winding country road. Remarkably, the rough, unpainted areas of the canvas appear as animated as the daubs of paint flickering across the picture's surface, like leaves in shifting sunlight. When it was painted, Study of Trees was at the vanguard of intellectualized, abstract painting. It was painted about two years before his passing when he was 65-years old in 1904.

2
Blue Road
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986), American
Oil on canvas, 10" x 14" (w x h), 1962
Sotheby's March 2020 auction
Estimate $400,000 - $600,000 USD
Sold: $1,460,000 USD

Source, Sotheby's notes edited:
In 1959, Georgia O'Keeffe, a self-taught Japanophile, traveled to Japan for the first time, yet her interests in Japanese culture began decades earlier in the 1910s. It was at this time that she met Arthur Wesley Dow, an art educator who integrated Japanese art into the curriculum for its formal qualities of composition, spatial relations, and color theory. He balanced light and dark while emphasizing flatness and the decorative aesthetics of Japanese prints, abandoning pictorial imitation. Painted nearly fifty years later, Blue Road explores these same formal qualities of flatness and balanced composition. As O'Keeffe herself explained, "It is lines and color put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstracted is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint".

3
Winding Road
Jenny Grevatte (1951- ), British
Oil on board, 16" x 10" (w x h), 1990
The Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College,
University of Cambridge, UK, Gift of the artist

Source: UK Art, edited:
Jenny Grevatte, a teacher, paints colorful, slightly stylized work. Born in Bristol, UK, in 1951, at Leicester Polytechnic, 1969-70, she did a foundation course, then an honors degree in fine art, 1970-4. She was involved in adult education in Leicestershire, 1978-84; was a visiting lecturer at De Montfort University; lectured part-time at University of Leicester, 1984-98; and was a part-time tutor at Loughborough College of Art and Design, 1996-8. In 1982 and 1992 she was a visiting/exchange artist to Saarland, Germany. She's been in many group shows and solo shows including The John Davies Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, 1999, with a retrospective, Leicester City Museum, 2001. Her art is in collections at the University of Leicester; Abbot Hall, Kendal; Christ's College, Cambridge; and British Oxygen Company.

4
Blue Winter Road
Lois Dodd (1927-), American
Oil on Masonite, 12" x 12" (w x h), 2010
Alexandre Gallery, New York, NY

Source, 2011 Interview with John Yau, edited
In 1964, Alex Katz and his second wife, Ada, bought Lois' place in Lincolnville. Lois moved to her new place in Cushing. "When I moved over to Cushing from Lincolnville and I started painting directly from life... [My paintings] could be much more descriptive, but I don't want to do that. In that sense, one always puts the blame on the abstract painters. That's what I looked at and loved. I don't want to get too descriptive. You can go so far and stop. I can feel when to stop... The good thing about painting with other people outside is there's somebody else there, and the other thing is you make a date and you do it. Because by yourself you can think of reasons not to, like, I don't want to go out, it's too cold, it's too something. But you go do it when there are others, it's a very good support system."

5
Study of a Road in Mountain Forest

Edward Hopper (1882-1967), American

Fabricated chalk on paper, 11" x 16" (w x h), undated
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Source, Hopper quote:
When Edward Hopper was asked why he selected certain subjects over others, he replied, "I do not exactly know, unless it is that I believe them to be the best mediums for a synthesis of my inner experience." Another time he said, "To me the most important thing is the sense of going on. You know how beautiful things are when you're traveling."

6
Wet Road
Charles T. Bowling (1891-1985), American
Lithograph, 12" x 9" (w x h), circa 1942
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX

Source, Texas State Historical Association edited:
Charles T. Bowling (1891-1985), a Texas painter and lithographer was active in the pre-World War II group of Regionalist artists known as the Dallas Nine. Although he never completed high school, he cultivated his artistic skills through a series of sign-painting and draftsman jobs and began a forty-nine-year career as a draftsman and civil engineer for Texas Power and Light Company in 1916. He studied fine art at 35-years-old when a long convalescence at home left him with free time to sketch and paint. He subsequently studied with Olin H. Travis at the Dallas Art Institute and then pursued independent studies. Bowling developed a highly finished, realistic style that featured rural landscapes and urban scenes, favoring a subtle palette of grey, ochre, rust, and cool blue-green. Bowling's works are included in the collections of the Witte Museum, San Antonio, the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery at the University of Texas at Austin, the Grace Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Art.

7
Wood Road #1

Fairfield Porter (1907-1975), American

Watercolor on paper, 12" x 16" (w x h), 1972
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Source Original and quote:
This was painted in 1972 when Fairfield Porter was 65-years-old, three years before he passed. He was recognized as a master realist painter, as well as a recognized art critic. In a 1966 essay titled Art and Knowledge, Porter explained his view of connecting realism with abstraction: "The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is. And the abstract artist what art is. But it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality."

8
Double Road
Elizabeth O'Reilly (1956- )
Oil on panel, 15" x 15" (w x h), 2007
Farnsworth Art Museum

Source, Farnsworth Museum notes, edited:
Elizabeth O'Reilly received a B. Ed from the National University of Ireland, and a MFA from Brooklyn College, New York. Irish-born, but Brooklyn based since 1986, Elizabeth O'Reilly responds in her work to the tug between her Irish homeland and her adopted America. O'Reilly divides her time between her studio in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, NY and her home on the North Fork of Long Island, though she paints in Maine and New Jersey. She paints plein air oils, watercolors, and collages done in watercolor. Her work is in collections including the Ballinglen Museum of Art, Ireland, the Memphis Brooks Museum in Memphis TN, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME, and the Farnsworth Museum of Art, Rockland, ME. She exhibits in the George Billis gallery, Chelsea, NY and the Caldbeck Gallery in Rockland, ME.