Let's begin with the T. Allen Lawson painting above. It's title is "The Release of Winter" and upon first glance it is exactly that, a woodland interior with the first bare ground of spring breaking through the winter's waning snow. It has a lovely, foggy damp beauty that is very familiar to us Mainers.
Now, let's really look at it. The two dark trees in the foreground dominate the work. All others play a kind of supporting cast to these two stars. Look at how their trunks curve in opposite directions. It reminds me of how tango dancers strut and bend away from each other in the beginning. The darker male has no branches to hide his haughty stage right stance while the woman, with her curves softened by twigs of a branch, bends the other way.
Notice how the branch on the female tree just touches a third tree. The large fallen branches (trees?) in the left foreground also point to that tree. Could it be that we are witnessing some kind of arboreal Shakespearean drama?
I can hear you now. "Hold it John! All this visual conjecture is pretty far out."
Is it really? Isn't good art supposed to help us see things we might not have found otherwise? My tango dance with its mysterious stranger might not be yours. You might see the two little saplings standing in the clearing in the right middle ground of the painting and think they look lonely and a little afraid. It doesn't matter that your truth is not my truth. The point is both our truths and many more can be accessed by a painting such as "The Release of Winter" and for that we can thank Tim Lawson.
