So this week was a really good one for my art-history loving self. We had two days off from school this week, one one of which I went up to the Thomas Cole House in Catskill, NY.  It was really cool to get to go to the home and studio of the founder of the Hudson River School of painting. To be honest, I really only got to learn about this art movement and the artists involved in it until my last year of undergrad.  I had initially just thought they were boring landscape paintings, but had the chance to really learn about how the development of the style was tied to the social/cultural beliefs at the time and changed with the development of science.

The Thomas Cole House itself has a variety of art works done by him and other artists from his time, including some small pieces from his student Frederic Church (honestly one of my favorite painters ever). In one room, it showed different pieces of Cole from how he developed and created the works. One of my favorite works was actually a large  study Cole did similar to a color wheel, entitled “Diagram of Kontrasts”.

It was really cool to see the materials that artists had to use to create their paints at the time. The colors here included raw umber, burnt sienna, naples yellow, vermillion, carbon black, and white chalk.

There was also a contemporary artist on display named Jason Middlebrook. His work reminded me a lot of some of Lindsay B’s work with the lines and designs he used. Also, his choice to utilize natural resources (in this case wood) reminded me also of some of Brette’s ideas she is dealing with in terms of mandmade things interfering with nature.