Transient

This is part two on recent paintings created from memory.  I decided to write about these two paintings in particular because to me they actually go together as companion pieces.  Though quite different in color and lighting, they have similar compositions and themes.

Last week we took a day trip down to North Carolina to visit family, and to do that we had to pass through Hillsville (appropriately named).  We were dealing with a cool, damp, cloudy, rainy day--not great for traveling.  There were pockets of thick fog where you couldn't see much beyond the bend, and then there were places where the clouds opened up and let just a shaft of light peak through and shine on the newly dressed green hillside.  Alison and I both deeply regretted forgetting the camera (something we often do, and often regret). 

On the ride home we drove back through Hillsville, and again the sky was moving with these monstrous clouds, rain was falling in the far distance, and yet shafts of light were streaming through here and there, piercing this cloud and then that cloud.  And those words of Tolkien again came to my mind as I watched this unfolding transient scene roll before me.

"...In the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."