Naure lovers . . .

Today we give a birthday salute to Thomas Cole (February 1, 1801 - February 11, 1848), American painter regarded as the founder of the mid-19th century art movement referred to as the Hudson River School.  The Hudson River School paintings are romanticized pastoral settings, where human beings and nature coexist peacefully.

Thomas Cole discovered the beauty of nature at an early age. Later in life, he became very concerned with the negative impact of industrial development upon his beloved Catskill landscapes - the very landscapes that served as his inspiration for painting.  One might consider him an early member of the Green Movement.

One of the largest collections of paintings by artists of the Hudson River School is at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut.  If you are in the Catskills, New York (USA) area visit Cedar Grove and be sure to take the Art Trail.

The love of nature brings me back to my mother (which is the journey of this blog's quest).  She left her art studies but she will never leave her love of nature.  She is one of the few women I know that gets upset with a bouquet of roses (it saddens her to see cut flowers in a vase, knowing they will die).  She gets it fair, her side of the family have been farmers in America since the 1700s and I remember all her family in the city kept Victory Gardens.  She still gets a twinkle in her eye and a lightness to her step when she goes to check on her garden. It has taken me many a year to understand her joy, but I still do not know how she could simply walk away from her art work.  I do know that Nature holds many secrets and my mother loves to discover them.  I still wonder why she did not seek those secrets with her art.