Unreality

On a day when I go back to Massachusetts for a while, I think of our little bit of heaven. It's cloudy and cool and will rain later, a kind of prep for re-entry into the "real" world. We're always trying to understand what's real and what's not. We saw this painter on Beech Hill; she was standing on the porch of a house restored from a lost age, on a property preserved from modern development, in a setting of unworldly beauty, trying to capture something. What did she see as real? A column of the house's porch, a lone tree, the Camden Hills and the ocean to the north....in paint, on canvas. The photo seems to capture the several layers of this dilemma, through a glass darkly, you might say. She was trying to understand it for herself, and for others to lift out of themselves for a moment, to experience another world, then go back down the hill or out of state and try to think how this changes your life.

We made kind of a joke picture that same day, although it's really more of a tribute to Wyeth than a satire on his fame. The very best art takes you to another world but doesn't take you out of yours. "Christina's World" looks at the harsh beauty of Maine straight on and shows what's real, even though the Olsen House doesn't really look like the property Wyeth painted and he used his wife as the model - doesn't matter. The important thing is the capture of an image no matter how fleeting or permanent.