Fairfield Porter

This is"Penobscot Bay with Peak Island"

How did I grow old never having seen a painting by Fairfield Porter?  I'd heard his name - - someone I knew when I was much much younger called him a great "representationalist" painter, or some thing like that. Not the word "realist", which I might have understood better.

This summer at the Parrish Art Museum on the east end of Long Island had an exhibit of his paintings - - it seems that he lived in Southampton.  And he painted many things there.  Not a lot of detail, but the essence seems to be all there.  And when he died in 1975, his widow gave most of what was in his studio to the Parrish Art Museum.  Including unfinished paintings and some on board; those have never been exhibited. Or so I am told.

Gallery 8 in the Parrish Art Museum is all Porters - this is just a bit of it.

He wrote somewhere:   "The realist thinks he knows ahead of time what reality is, and the abstract artist what art is, but it is in its formality that realist art excels, and the best abstract art communicates an overwhelming sense of reality."

I'll probably now start looking for his paintings everywhere.

This is called "Wild Roses".