Rarified Air
by John O'Hern
American Art Collector Magazine
July 2007 issue
These painters illustrate how art can transform the immaterial into material
beauty...
Away from the sun and clouds and deep in the woods there is a much different
feeling of "atmosphere." The air is not visible, yet the moisture
it carries is palpable. Nancy Depew's Low Water allows us to see the
deep shadow as well as the highlight of a shaft of sun illuminating a rock
which, at the same time, casts the shadow of a precariously rooted tree across
it. Depew's landscapes are mysterious and vaguely threatening. They remind
me of the opening lines of Evangeline a favorite poem by Longfellow. "This
is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,/ Bearded with
moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight..."
Painters recall our primeval responses to nature and remind us of what we
have forgotten.
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