Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Michigan Moraine

                                  click on image to see larger view
Michigan Moraine


42” x 72” (106.7cm x 182.9cm) acrylic on Masonite®
SOLD

Since I’ve been unable to spend as much time as usual in the studio this month I’m posting a few paintings done some years ago. This was done as a commission and is currently on exhibit in the lobby of the Ganton Art Gallery at Spring Arbor University. Farmers in Michigan often plow up large stones and boulders left by the receding glaciers thousands of years ago and pile them along the fence rows of their fields.

A moraine is the mass of earth and rock left at the front and edges of the glacier as it advanced. Michigan was once covered by large glaciers that left the rocks and debris in the planes that later became the farmland here in Michigan. This painting shows a valley of such stones. I’ve been intrigued by these “Moraines” and decided to make this a painting about that phenomenon. It gave me an opportunity to show the beauty of the natural landscape and also the beauty and texture of the stones and boulders deposited by glaciers.



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