Historical Landscapes

Newburgh Bay	Storm King Mt.	Hightop & Ashokan
Kaaterskill Clove Light	Wallkill River	Niagara Falls
Ashokan After Gifford	Ashokan	Kaaterskill Falls

After a long hiatus from painting (home schooling a family of four and sending them off to college) Griffin opened her paint box and found all still in good order. To assure her old ties to the Hudson River School (where her training sprang from) were still what they should be she began visiting those local places which inspired the famous paintings by Fredrick Church, Jasper Cropsey, Thomas Cole, and (her favorite) Sanford Gifford.
Much had changed during the ensuing years (from the 1850's when these artists were painting) and she began to wonder, what they would make of the changes.  Many of their paintings were statements of their times, reflecting the turmoil of the Civil War and the domesticating of the wilderness landscape they cherished so much, (Thomas Cole inspired President Theodore Roosevelt to create a National Parks Department). The paintings presented here are a few from a series of works that sprang from those musings.

She began to see landscape painting not merely as a static view of a site but also as a record of how that view had been interpreted over the years. Rather than approaching a particular view as an immovable point in space, she began playing with the essence of that view and how it could be expanded through time and space to represent the history of place.  Most painting in this series have a famous counterpart.
Extra reference material is included with enlargements