After Sanford Gifford

This is yet another photograph taken because I had seen something similar 30 years ago in art history class, where I  drew the composition of the paintings as the slides went by, making it stick in my memory.  That class, taught by Rena Coen (Joel and Ethan Coen brothers mum) gave me my first and preferred view of America, oddly enough.  For me these paintings became a sort of comforting if highly fictionalized view of a county I was living in but had not yet explored.  Nowadays I walk out with my camera in these wild forests, and there are moment when I see the kind of landscape that painters such as Cole, Church, Friedrich, Blakelock, Gifford saw, and I’m amazed that I can feel so connected to the land through them.

This is photograph, After Sanford Gifford is on view at the North Dakota Museum of Art now.  It is 30×42 framed, and for sale in the annual Art Auction, November 7. http://ndmoa.com/artauctionfall08/index.htm

If you are interested in any of the many works in the auction, you don’t need to be there to bid.  Instruction are online.  I like this because the winning bid is split between the artists and the museum.  It’s a great museum under director Laurel Reuter, and the fundraiser is a worthy cause.