Image of the Week: Swimmers at Colgate Lake
© Durga Yael Bernhard
Here in the Catskill Mountains, winter is in tatters, with only patches of snow left scattered about. We're all looking forward to summer, including swimming in our beautiful lakes. Among them, Colgate Lake is arguably the most lovely, with the Windham Blackhead Range overlooking one side; and a mix of flowering meadows, rolling hills, and thick forest on the other.
Most folks gather on the grassy shoreline that curves around the near side of Colgate Lake. But on a certain lucky day, I got to observe a cluster of people at leisure on the far side. Here, a group of boulders stuck out of the water, serving as a dock for these swimmers. Their colorful figures stood out against the dark thatch of mixed forest that towered over them. The whole scene transformed into a painting before my eyes – and an opportunity to use color and brushwork like the Impressionists before me – who painted figures bathing on the edge of a river or a lake. Among these paintings, it is Cézanne's unique polarity of figures in landscapes that have inspired me most.
So captured in this small painting is a moment of humans in relation to the earth – to the land where they sit on rocks, to the forests that surround them, to their feet dangling in snowmelt water from the mountains before them. Could I make them all of a piece, like painted threads in a tapestry of color?
This happy handful of people sounded more like a small crowd as their voices echoed across the water, bouncing back and multiplying into distant strands of words that floated through the forest. No wonder the legend of Rip Van Winkle took root in these mountains. It's easy to imagine the echoing sounds that led the hapless, wandering Rip to a bowling match of enchanted Dutch elders, high among the peaks that overlook these rugged mountains and pastoral valleys.
Swimmers at Colgate Lake is presently on view along with ten other landscapes I've painted of the Catskills, at Ulster Savings Bank in Phoenicia, NY. Several more paintings that did not fit in the bank may be viewed by appointment. All paintings are for sale.
D Yael Bernhard