The Power of Green

Because I was born the day before Saint Patrick's Day, I have always associated the color GREEN with my birthday, due in good part to all the shiny emerald shamrocks taped in store windows at this time of year. Crayola green was my favorite color when I was a kid. I loved to dig holes in the dirt with a kitchen spoon back then, and I remember one day unearthing a green crayon and thinking that it was a magic color. While I was on a field trip to the MFA in Boston with my painting class in 1989, that notion returned to me full force after seeing an abstract painting by Arthur Dove. I'd never heard of Dove, and at first I thought that the painting was very crude: it was a simple organic shape, a blob of green on canvas. I didn't understand it, and my painting teacher helped me to look at it, explaining the raw power of the form and the pure color. I was not totally convinced: it was just a blob! Yet of all the artwork I saw that day, that one potent image stuck with me long after I'd left the museum. I've posted some of Dove's paintings here, but I had no luck finding the one I'd seen at the MFA. Here are a couple of links to Arthur Dove:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE7DA143BF935A25753C1A965948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

http://artchive.com/artchive/D/dove.html

While Googling Dove, I also found this photo of a place in Derbyshire, England, called Dove Hole. This image is very much in the spirit of the painting I viewed at the MFA years ago! Also, I couldn't resist posting a couple of hummingbird images for today - the ruby throated hummer has the most magnificent shimmering emerald feathers...

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!