Cottonwood Calm
14×11 inches
Acrylic
©2008 Lucinda Howe
$325

Bright yellow cottonwood trees light up the Rio Grand valley between Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico in the autumn. This painting reminds me of several trips to that area to paint with friends. I remember a lovely relaxing lunch under these trees near Embudo. The sunny colors in this painting make me happy and hopeful that I can go back to New Mexico again some day.

This week I’ve been reviewing my inventory of paintings and selecting work for an exhibition at Still Hopes Episcopal Retirement Community opening in October. I think it’s a useful exercise to look back through several years of painting and try to identify threads of continuity. Perhaps because I’ve been writing about trees recently, I realized that trees are a common theme in my work. Wherever my plein air excursions take me, I’m often attracted by a tree line or a backlit silhouette. The shapes evoke specific places in my memory. With this in mind, I have titled my exhibition Abiding Trees. I’ll be writing more about the exhibition in the next few weeks. I hope you will plan to stop by Still Hopes and see it between October 3 and November 29, 2016.