From a Distance

Each of these luminous and mysterious images of trees against sky, field, and river evoke a subtle variation of light and atmosphere. The arrangement of the trees – whether standing in solitude or in pairs or in large groupings seem at once inevitable and yet surprising, formal yet accidental. All of these paintings are comprised from memory, imagination and thumbnail sketches from my beautiful basement studio in my home in Connecticut. I work on wood board, paper and canvas using several layers of gesso before priming the surface with cadmium red base, a quick sketch using charcoal is used to lay out the design then the paint is applied. I work in layers using thinned down oil color, building on these layers with glazing techniques the colors are adjusted and brought up to completion before final coats of varnish are applied. Light has come to play an important part, and when I look back over this body of work, I feel it speaks about spiritual places, places that contain a quiet inner light, radiating an ethereal whisper, the places we see every day. – William McCarthy

Visit Hilton Downtown Columbus.