The Forest

March 2020 - July 2020

On March 13th 2020, I left New York City to stay with my son upstate in a remote forest near Ellenville. I thought I was going for two weeks but, with a couple of day visits to the city, I stayed until July 14th. The first month was gloomy, wintry, stark leafless trees, grey skies. The days were filled with hard labor, fixing the house and moving objects - getting through the days like many other people frightened and marooned in their homes. No end to this exile was in sight.

However, on April 18th, after complete blankness, two images cropped up that initiated the Forest series. One was of the faithful little pine tree enclosed in a broken bark fortress that I passed on my daily walks with Hector, Sam’s german shepherd, and the other from a poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) to which I clung in the following days.

The poem is called The Coming of Good Luck:

’So good luck came, and on my roof did light,
Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night:
Not all at once, but gently, as the trees
Are by the sunbeams tickled by degrees.’

On that day, I saw good luck alight on the snowy shrub outside my bedroom window. And on that day, the forest came to life.

Click on each painting to see it enlarged and to view accompanying poems and music.