Fossil, Oregon (in progress)
I turned sixty-five years old a few days ago, just after completing months of work on my large and very detailed 8th Avenue painting. It set me to thinking about my future, and about how far out I can see it. After finishing that painting, I raced off to NYC for another whirlwind trip, and I had just returned when I was able to make a leap into that future, roughing in this new painting in less than a day, based on a photo I had taken when I was camping a few summers ago in Central Oregon.
We left Portland in the late afternoon on a spur-of-the-moment jaunt in my mobile studio, heading east along the Columbia before turning south at Biggs Junction on our usual route to the Priest Hole campsite located at a hairpin bend in the John Day river. As we drove out of the small town of Fossil after grabbing some supplies at the market just before it closed, we scanned the small side roads for a likely looking place to pull off for the night. At the end of one of them we found ourselves at the fenceline and locked gate of a large spread we could barely make out in the distance. The sunsets here in the summer tend towards 9PM, and there's light in the sky past 10. On this particular nearly cloudless and very quiet evening, the intensity of the deep blue sky above, and the golden-orange slice of afterglow below, framed by the wires and poles marching off to the cluster of structures was a powerful metaphor for some big thoughts.
I'm always seeking the disruptive sense of being in two places at once, and this scene, with its distant horizon, triggered a sense of timelessness and contrast with the hectic urban life I so often paint. This expansive vista, seemingly remote from the cities, is in fact connected to them in many ways, including a riot of information flowing down those thin wires overhead and beamed in from satellites. I got a sense of steady forward motion towards that horizon, out there in the future...My plan is to exhibit some of these wide-open landscapes alongside my urban scenes to further explore the contrasts between them.
My wonderful gallery representation: LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
And as always, you can also contact me directly by email: info@sethtane.com and follow my occasional photo posts on: Instagram