Home | 2001 & 2002 Paintings

An Appreciation

Many words occur when I think of the paintings of Kurt Solmssen: rough beauty, clarity, endless fascination, and -- of course-- color. Deep, abiding color. As a New Yorker, color for me was always black. Green and blue was for ... well ...Midwesterners. People from Ohio like color. And crayons-things like that. But one winter's day years ago-- in Terry 's gallery full of Solmssens --- I discovered color for the very first time.

But it's not only color that makes Solmssen's paintings inspire, beguile, surprise, and endure. I'm reminded of an evening a year ago. Dinner with friends and their children ages 5 and 9. In the middle of dinner, the 9 year-old gets up and comes around the table to where I am sitting. "I like that painting," she says, "The shadow's got holes in it." I look. I see the shadow thrown across a road, over a hill sloping down towards us. I realize she's right. It has holes of light, as if the unseen tree above had gaps and spaces between its leaves. The shadow evokes a leafy bower over our heads, a coolness. Just up the road from this miraculous shadow, a house sits bathed in white sunshine-like in October when the sky is saturated blue. We stand in the shadow, and look amazed.

"Zoe," says I -we're friends-in-art now -- "Let me show you my favorite thing." We go into the living room and gaze at another Solmssen. "You see that shadow under the eave of the house there?" I says. "Uh-huh," she says. "Come with me," I says and we walk up to the painting, our noses an inch from the canvas. We inspect the purplish-blue swipe under that eave for a long moment. " It still looks like a shadow," whispers Zoe, in awe. "I know," says I. And we nod and smile.

For some reason, Kurt Solmssen's paintings live. I can't tell you why. The leaves rustle, the light dapples, the high yellow grass waves in the wind. For me, it's the purity of his clear water, deep fields... trees. For Zoe, it's simply a shadow with holes in it.

© Julia Newton, 2002