Grace Mitchell contributed this essay to accompany our 2025 Summer Gallery Artist Exhibition
If it’s true, as the Pulitzer Prize winning American historian Perry Miller believed, that our national identity and the spiritual well-being of our citizens are inextricably entwined with the terrestrial environment of the country, what do the degradation and increasing threats to that environment suggest about the national identity and spiritual well-being of the citizens/country today?
The artists of the 19 th century Hudson River School, recognized as creating the first uniquely American art, portrayed and celebrated the terrestrial environment of a very new country that was vast, beautiful and rich in resources, offering new opportunities for freedom, progress, and wealth no longer available in the old world. Artists who painted this majestic landscape thought of it as a manifestation of the divine and saw themselves as spiritual teachers, bringing the word of God to the world. All was great and good.
Unfortunately, of course, the world was also receiving another divine message in the form of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which used Biblical quotes to show that Americans had been chosen by God to populate the continent. A major expansion was on its way west, running roughshod over much of this magnificent land and encouraged, as it turns out, by enormous paintings of the wilderness created and put on public display by some of the Hudson River School artists.
So there was a potential conflict all along, and the putative father of the Hudson River School, Thomas Cole, feared that untrammeled development would throw off the moral compass of the nation and lead to societal decline.
As we approach the 250 th anniversary of our nation, it appears that his fear was well founded. Contemporary artists are faced with a less than majestic landscape and an existential crisis founded in that untrammeled development. They grapple with the situation in many different ways and some have come to the conclusion that simply “bearing witness” is probably the best bet. My current paintings were motivated by that approach. Bearing witness involves simply observing, documenting, comprehending, and even adapting to the situation at hand. There’s no great expectation of its making any big change in the situation. But it is recorded. Plus it’s good for the spiritual well being of the artists and, one hopes, the people who have the opportunity to see the work.
The new paintings continue to depict the landscape, while the technique of sanding, scraping and repainting relates to the damaged quality of the environment. But they are painted in bright, celebratory colors and are meant to show a joy in what still remains of our magnificent world. The birds that one may recognize in the paintings are really part of a centuries long tradition in art of both the West and the East that sees birds as symbols, as links between heaven and earth, as harbingers of peace and hope and transcendence. They were not planned by me. They flew in during the process of sanding and were most welcome. But seeing them inspired two of the titles I used: “After a Storm” and “Birds Sing After a Storm”, are derived from a quote attributed to Rose Kennedy, who, speaking of grief and great loss at the time of the assassination of RFK, said “Birds sing after a storm” and suggested that we should “continue to delight in whatever sunlight remains.”