Music in the Park c. 1935 - 1943

Ann Nooney made this print, Music in the Park, at some point in her career, though we don’t know exactly when. I love how she’s used color to create a sense of depth and atmosphere, it’s like she’s trying to capture the feeling of being in a park on a summer evening. Look at the way Nooney has rendered the trees in the foreground. She’s used these short, choppy lines to suggest the texture of the bark, and the way the light filters through the leaves. You can almost feel the warmth of the sun on your skin and there is a roughness that gives the work an honest, hand-made quality. It feels very intuitive. It’s a painting about painting, about the tactile pleasure of working with materials and the way that process can generate meaning. It makes me think of Milton Avery, who also had a knack for capturing the poetry of everyday life. Ultimately, though, Nooney’s work is its own thing, a reminder that art is always a conversation, a back-and-forth between artists across time.