The Color of Evening at Elizabeth Moss Gallery

Nina Jerome Evening Landscape Paintings

I have worked for a year on this series of evening landscapes and will exhibit them from October 24 through November 30 at Elizabeth Moss Gallery, 251 US Route One, Falmouth, Maine (exit 10 off 295). The landscapes represent places within and surrounding Addison, Maine, a rural coastal village in Washington County where I spend the summer months.

Evening Statement

Evening signals an interval of harmony and announces the end of the day. Color relationships become saturated and complex, shadows lengthen, and their movement accelerates. During midday hours light seems suspended and unchanging, making it easier to deny that time is passing. Evening is different. Look away for a moment and gray has overtaken the landscape. As a result, it has become my habit to be present and to witness with intense awareness the quality and variation of light during the hours between five and eight. I want to delay the transition, and hoard the color, but that would be like holding breath.

There is an aesthetic and psychological challenge to observing evening light that is often accompanied with both wonder and sadness. Pay attention when the tide is high and reflects the red sky, when the water has ebbed and the mud becomes violet, and when the clouds, rocks and trees catch the last gold. Pay attention to discern that moment when the color has finally faded to gray, when light shifts from sun to moon, and when artificial light dominates our space. Once evening has passed I am resigned to the absence of the day’s light and reminded that time moves forward.

Nina Jerome

October 2013