A natural beauty
Continues to draw artistic mentalities, seeking a little peace in the country, a little rest in its pristine glades.
Artists who don't mind bears in their back yards, or herons eating their expensive coy fish.
Bathed in the resident idealists glow, a soft breeze established by social explorers at Byrdcliff and by Family of Woodstock. Social concern, active political debate, heated, what is the best way to live, An In your face town intent on making a better world, or at least getting a better deal.
The community has been enhanced by several tides of artistic influx.
Swedes perhaps taking a wrong turn on their way to Lake Woebegone,
Pennsylvania impressionists wandering east struggling and hungry to embrace Modernism. All those WPA artists painting post offices, having parties, celebrating life. The big yes!
All mavericks, especially after the third afternoon martini, oh dear fellow was that your wife, so sorry”
Woodstock is a state of mind and all the intellectual formalists and free thinkers end up here painting landscape. They swore they never would they promised never to use green but they couldn't help it. The place is just too beautiful.
Winding streams to swim in.
Fields of grass and wild flowers and mt laurel,
Looming Mountains and deep valleys.
Steamy Augusts, masked balls. And did I mention Scotch.
Landscape painting has a long and vibrant history in the Hudson valley but a shaky one with in art history. Most critics and historians see it as a backward looking discipline with suspicious romantic roots.
But we still do it here, a graceful non-predatory way to interact with nature.
A delight to hand and eye.
Here, home to the dreamers
Order more green
But if you see me in NYC I may deny it.