Evening Ablaze 2018

Rose Freymuth-Frazier made this painting "Evening Ablaze" with oils, building up the image through layers of earth tones, from dark browns and greens, to the blazing oranges and yellows of the sunset. I find a real sense of process here, a way of finding the image through the act of painting. There's a beautiful tension between the thick, opaque strokes that define the trees and the more translucent washes that create the sky. You can almost feel the artist working and reworking the surface, searching for the right balance of light and shadow. Look at the way the light catches the water in the foreground, a single dab of yellow reflecting back the fiery sky. It's a small detail, but it brings the whole painting to life. This reminds me of some of the late landscapes by Turner, where the world seems to dissolve into pure light and color, but rendered with a close attention to the material properties of the paint itself. The artist seems less interested in capturing a specific scene, and more interested in evoking a feeling, a mood, a memory. It’s all feeling.