William Christine

It is most gratifying to exhibit my work at the Dutot Museum, because the Delaware Water Gap environs have permeated my life. My father took me on my first hikes along the Dunfield creek on the New Jersey side of the Gap and up to the old fire tower on the Pennsylvania side. Vacations were enjoyed camping at Kitatinny Beach and swimming in the Delaware with the immense Water Gap as background. In 1974 I spent a life changing semester as an undergraduate at the Artists for Environment Foundation then located in an aging manse overlooking the Delaware from a bluff near Flatbrookville. Subsequent studies gave me the opportunity to work with David Dewey and Lois Dodd, reexamining motifs of the area.

Thus the landscape and my reaction to it became the primary focus of my artwork.

My work in this show involves revisiting some of my favorite Water Gap area haunts from my early painting days. It also includes images of my wife’s family farm in Michigan and the garden where we now reside in Bethlehem PA. And perhaps a few random surprises.

The work expresses my desire to attempt to get close to “the nature of nature” as life forms relentlessly push outward to seek the air and sun. There are allusions to jazz as well (my shout out to the beloved Deer Head Inn across the street). The paintings in the show also vary spatially from a conventional landscape with foreground and background to musings that celebrate the dense space an observer experiences when faced with the burgeoning confusion of a meadow garden seen close up. Many of the larger paintings are based on watercolor studies done from direct observation of the motif.

Here is a sampling of places and ideas relating to my life and painting that I hold dear.