En plein air

I did not get out into the "open air" of Prospect Park today; by the time I got around to it, I had an hour left before guests arrived, and I had to vacuum. No, I had to; we have three cats, there was all this fur...yeah, I know. Pathetic.

However, the park came to me via an introduction to the work of [living] artist Michael Sorgatz. His depictions of Prospect Park and other Brooklyn scenes thrum with a slightly hallucinatory energy, and are mesmerizing and beautiful. 

Left: Prospect Park, Bridge with Cherry Tree
Acrylic on Canvas, 12"x16" 2008

Below: Greenmarket, Flower Vendor
Acrylic on Canvas, 12"x16" 2008

One of my favorite [living] Brooklyn artists, Ella Yang, has also done justice to the park. Yang, whose studio we've visited on the annual Gowanus art tour, captures the broken loveliness of post-industrial landscapes like the nearby canal, but handles "pretty" scenes with the same luminous austerity. If we had money, we would buy her stuff in a heartbeat.

 

Park Trees, Backlit Late Afternoon
oil on linen, 24"x 30" 2008

Park Trees, Show-Offs Along West Drive
oil on linen, 24"x 30" 2008

And finally, there is everyone's favorite [dead] painter of Prospect Park: William Merritt Chase, whose shimmering eye-candy views of formal gardens and walkways hint at the park's elegance circa the 1880s.

 I'm also fond of Chase for a personal reason: My grandmother, Fanny Granger Dow, who might be described as a "noted" watercolorist at the turn of the last century, studied under Chase at the Art Students League. Fanny painted outdoor scenes from her Upper West Side home to the coast of Maine, but to my knowledge she never painted en plein air in Prospect Park. 

Above: Smithsonian American Art Museum