I live in the Adirondack Park,

                                of northern New York,

                                on a wilderness lake,

                                       in the midst of tall mountains.

     The earth spins and strong winds rouse the open water, stretch a moment in time, and then snap it back into a pace we find familiar. Ice and snow quietly build up strength to crack boulders and coat the ground to a height above the heads of men. And soothing, warm, sunny days return on soft breezes and we fall in love with Earth again.

    The basis for the calendar paintings is what I think of as Earth's personal snapshots of its travel through space at compelling moments.

    The ten paintings of The Adirondack Calendar series depict color and light, wind and ice, sun and water. These are very subtle, very detailed painterly works. Pigments, powdered stone fragments and slices of thin mica taken from the Earth are applied by brush, branch, leaf, water and rock to make these paintings. When you view these paintings up close, you will see layer upon layer of translucent color and rock. 

    Dates and numbers and mathematical square boxes try to creep into these calendars, but they have very little power here and remain secondary. They are man's invention and, like mechanical time and clocks, they soldier on with self-importance. The Earth ignores them. The boxes look very real, three-dimensional and solid. But this is simply an optical illusion. There is no such thing as mechanized time.

    The strength of these painted works is the minute surface detail and the complexity of the earth materials that are used to make them. 

    The strength of a moment is the detail and complexity of impulses we receive with our eyes, our ears and our bodies as we ride on the surface of Earth.

                                                      Jan-Marie Spanard                       

                                                      Summer 2009