Recreating Bierstadt's Western Trips

This is a joint project between myself, Frazer Page Dougherty and my wife, Suzzanne Fokine, both artists for the past several decades. It is in obeisance of two of the great landscape painters of the 19th & 20th centuries - Paul Cezanne & Albert Bierstadt.

Both born in Europe, it was only Bierstadt that made paintings in America, although they both were instrumental in making the way for the paintings that we still see today - Cezanne’s work began what we might call ‘abstract’ painting, from Albers to Newman to Pollack, in my paintings. And in Suzzanne’s work, we still see reflections of Bierstadt in the landscape (plein-air) paintings of Winslow Homer, Fairfield Porter or Georgia O’Keefe.

We plan to re-trace Bierstadt’s trips to the West in 1859 and 1863, in a custom camper/trailer from VRV XTR equipped with two exterior studios - one for Suzzanne & one for myself. As best as possible we will duplicate Bierstadt’s locations/paintings on these two trips. In most cases, my paintings will be ‘abstract’, while Suzzanne's will be fundamentally ‘plein-aire’, tho' not literal landscapes.

We have proposed a selection of the paintings & watercolors, as a show “Bringing Some Elevation to the Flat Lands’ or ‘Mountains to the Beach’ to both the new Parrish Museum in Watermill, NY, as well as a few of the new contemporary art galleries on the East End of Long Island.

We propose to begin the project in mid-October, 2013 & end by mid Spring of 2014.