Are you familiar with the work of Albert Pinkham Ryder? Critics talk about his, "reductive tendency toward varnish-slide chiaroscuro." Meaning his paintings, made at the turn of the last century, are disintegrating in slow motion. A darkness is overtaking them as the pieces of chemical process he stupidly employed to make his art drain one another of color. Oddly, the works that remain, while astonishingly different from their original states, are still romantically compelling in spite of the vandalism of age upon an unstable foundation.
You have captured that mood of a late nineteenth century plein air painting which, while succumbing to science, still lurks in beauty beneath a patina of time. I like its mystery and enjoy the moment which itself ironically sits balanced on a fissure between fall and winter.
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This one is very interesting to me - like you, I live in the northeast U.S. and see weather like this all the time. I usually don't go out and photograph in it simply because of the "gloom". There's very little color (most of the leaves are gone), it's cold and damp, and Spring feels like it's years away.
Still, I find myself spending a lot of time in this image. I honestly don't know why (don't take that wrong, please, because it's not a criticism). Maybe it's the mood coupled with my familiarity with the conditions. On a superficial level, we could say that the image is flat, monochromatic (or nearly so), nothing to anchor the image, yada, yada, yada. But all that misses the point, at least for me. I just keep peering into that fog, looking for something, and I don't know what I'm looking for.
Can you tell me where in Maine it was taken? Near the coast or inland?
