Vermont Hills 1936

Milton Avery made Vermont Hills using soft muted oil paint, blurring the lines between realism and abstraction. Look at how Avery has used color to create a sense of depth and space. The blues and greens of the sky and distant hills recede into the background, while the darker greens and browns of the foreground trees and bushes come forward. The painting is built up from layers and layers of these thin glazes, with lots of the canvas still showing through the strokes. The trees themselves aren't depicted in detail, but rather suggested through a series of short, gestural strokes of dark paint. For me, that dark, almost black mass of a tree on the left is amazing! It gives the work weight and anchors it, making the wispy thin washes behind it even more luminous. It reminds me a bit of Arthur Dove's landscapes, where forms are simplified and flattened into abstract shapes, but still retain a sense of place and atmosphere. Painting is an ongoing conversation, full of echoes and whispers across time.