The Landscapes of Our Happiness
I was reminded of the power of a landscape during a rather heartbreaking scene in the novel I’m currently reading, Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett. In a moment of deep reflection while standing before a walking path, the narrator recalls and lists the various fields and meadows that have defined his life, marveling that “all of these are given back to me now, the landscapes of my happiness… and flooded with life.”
Something I hear often about many of the landscape paintings here is that they, too, bring people back to the outdoor scenes of their happiness. Paintings by Julia Jensen, Jeanine Sobell Pastore, Ariane Luckey, and Lou Schellenberg come to mind when thinking back to these conversations I’ve had with visitors to the gallery.
For instance, Julia’s new Tracking Time is, for me, a meadow in Cape Elizabeth, the gently sloping hills of Alna, a farm near Chapel Hill, and a tree-lined field at the height of summer outside Stowe—beautiful places I’ve shared with my husband and our dogs. The landscapes of our lives, and of our happiness.
It’s a privilege to spend my days around paintings that inspire such feelings and to also share them with others who feel similarly.
