Anne Garton : View from Fort Hill, oil on canvas 12 x 36

Monday, April 21, 2008

View from Fort Hill, oil on canvas 12 x 36

The view from the top of Fort Hill in Eastham on Cape Cod. I have written an essay on this view (see sidebar) which articulates my feeling for the special qualities of this place, both historically and spiritually. There are walking trails all through this property which belongs to the National Seashore, but I seldom walk it. I like to keep it whole and a little distant, as if it can only hold its power from this perspective.

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Check out my website www.annegarton.com . as well as other interesting links.

My Painting "Island Fire" was juried into the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod's annual winter show at the Cotuit Center for the Arts.

Check out my work, and other fabulous art at the beautiful Luminati Gallery, 860 Route 134, Dennis Mass.

My painting "Amber Waves of Grain" will be part of a group show at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in September. It has been shown at the State House and at the Cahoom Museum of Art as part of the "America the Beautiful" centennial celebration.

My Painting "Wild Garden at Salt Pond" has been juried into the Northeast Prize Show at the Cambridge Art Association and can be viewed at the University Place Gallery on Mt. Auburn St. until June 24th, 2010.

My work has been featured in the Boston International Fine Art Show at the Renjeau Galleries Booth.

I am represented in the Boston area by the Renjeau Galleries in Natick and Concord http://www.renjeau.com and on Cape Cod by Luminati Gallery in South Dennis, Rte 134

Painting Eastham on Cape Cod

I am painting Eastham on Cape Cod; it’s almost all that I paint, except for a very special landscape in eastern Ontario that has attached itself to me over a lifetime and that I call home. Of Eastham I paint the sky, the sea and the land in their constantly changing relationship.
An incandescent light hovers over the Outer Cape, attracting artists for generations. In Eastham, a small town located on the outstretched forearm of Cape Cod, an artist can chase that light as it rises from the ocean and sets over the bay in the course of a single day, as if on an island. The sky captures and holds the light and is an ever-shifting marker of mood and temperament. Ultimately it is oblivious to our interpretations, and yet we take our emotional sight lines from the sky. We drift outside at night to study its mysterious implacability. We step into the morning, our eyes trained to its revelations.
Here on the Outer Cape, the sea, the sky and the land are partnered in a shape-shifting dance. The beauty of their performance is inexhaustible.

Fort Hill and Nauset Marsh, Eastham, Cape Cod

Fort Hill is an ancient place. At first, as you ascend the hill, you look down and across a lovely, sloping meadow capped by a sky that looms over the Atlantic, registering the slightest weather change. That would almost be enough. But then, when you reach the top of the hill, what you see is a view that will draw you to this place every day for the rest of your life, if you’re inclined that way. It’s a view that’s been stored in my head for decades. I’ve been painting it in my mind, and I’ve been painting it for real all year, in all seasons, at all times of day.

There’s a human history to the place. Indians were involved. Captain Penniman built his mansion right at the base of the hill, so somehow sea-captains were involved too. And settlers who must have built the antique cape-style houses along Governor Prence Road. It could be that some sort of early hominids were involved, but I don’t know about that. It just seems imaginable. The place is haunted.

The human history of Fort Hill is important mostly because, thanks to a lot of bureaucratic interference and brilliant foresight, I’m able to see it through those ancient eyes. Because this is one place on the Cape, one of several in the bounty of Eastham, where it’s possible to know a place in almost the same way our ancestors knew it.
Fort Hill is sublime.Fort Hill and Nauset Marsh, Eastham