Image of the Week: Delaware River Headwaters
© 2019 D. Yael Bernhard
Here's a small landscape painting I did just a few weeks ago, not far from my home. The sleepy town of Margaretville, New York straddles the divide between two watersheds. A steep hill known as the "high mount" seems to be where the change takes place. On one side, all the water flows east into the Hudson River; on the other, westward to the Delaware. Here in these mountains, the headwaters of the mighty river that George Washington crossed on Christmas Day, 1776 – almost 200 miles away at McConkey's Ferry, PA – gather quietly from the mountain streams of the western Catskills. But in heavy storms, this babbling brook can quickly rise – as some of you may remember from hurricanes past, the valley is quite prone to flooding.
I felt drawn to this spot not only for the colorful bushes and reeds along the water, but because the grey texture of the mountain created an interesting contrast. Building up the texture of a receding forest is challenging. It reduces in scale as it goes up the mountain. To the degree that I succeeded in painting this, that success is built on many failures. It looks simple, but it's not. Each tree is part of a collective, but still must be articulated individually.
Where do I find the patience to do this? In the flowing water. There was a fisherman just out of sight where the river disappears behind that yellow brushy area in the lower left. Like me, he was lulled into serenity, and stood in the water as long as I sat painting. He tipped his hat at me as he climbed up the embankment to his car. There's a certain kinship between fishermen and landscape painters.
As soon as the sun went behind that ridge, a chill set in. The season for outdoor painting was quickly coming to an end. That's why I cast aside my obligations for two hours to do just one autumn landscape painting before it was too late – thus resigning myself to working after midnight that night to make up for it. It was worth it.
People often ask how I manage to paint so much. It's simple: I keep late hours, and have never owned a TV.
A good week to all –
D Yael Bernhard