Woods Edge Series
WOODS EDGE
an ongoing series of work begun in 2014
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi tirovati per una selva oscura, . . .”
-Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia (Inferno I, 1-2)
“In the middle years of our life I found myself in a dark wood, . . .”
All of these paintings are done along a stretch of woods near my home in Vermont.
They are constructed on site, in the landscape, start to finish.
Each painting begins as a series of marks, strokes, jabs, dabs, globs, glops, scrapes or scratches of paint onto the surface of the paper. With a painting knife, they are worked and shaped and splayed and finessed and tortured and cajoled into telling me something
(sometimes quickly, sometimes not) . . .
something about the moment, the hour, the day, the season, the year. . .
about light and shadow, space and time, form and emptiness, stability, flux. . .
presence. . . absence . . . life . . . death . . .
about the experience of nature,
and the nature of experience . . .
about what we see and what we cannot see.
When the painting is complete, I pack up and go home.
Joseph Salerno
Marist College Art Gallery
November 8 – December 7,2018