New Work and a New Website

September 7, 2025

I am excited to share images of two new paintings and welcome you to my new website.

On August 27 I received word from Typepad, the platform that has hosted my website since I launched it more than 20 years ago, that they were going to shut down entirely on September 30. I have since been scrambling to create a new online home on WordPress, saving the content of the more than 200 posts and more than a thousand images I’ve posted on my Typepad site over two decades–all of which will disappear from the web at the end of this month forever–and build a new site which will look familiar to those who follow my work but be even better. I hope you will be pleased with the slightly new look, the much-improved “Available Works Album,” and the ability to look back at the last couple of years of my comments on the newest paintings. I will gradually add the images and content of older posts and some of the other links from my old site–interviews, videos about me and my work, and more.

Please let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I am happy to share images of and brief commentary on two new paintings.

Emberline ©Kesler Woodward 2025 Acrylic on canvas 40″ x 30″

I began work on Emberline during a time this summer when there were wildfires surrounding Fairbanks in every direction. Smoke filled the air and ash fell from the sky. The main road south was closed off and on for weeks, and legions of firefighters prioritized blazes that threatened outlying cabins and homes. It was not apocalyptic. We are accustomed to wildfires and smoke every summer–almost all lightning-started–and they are allowed to burn for the long-term health of the forest unless they are threatening dwellings. But it felt eerie being surrounded. I knew I did not want to illustrate the fires, painting flames, but I did want to convey a bit of that eeriness.

In early August we traveled to Atlanta for Dorli’s annual National Flute Convention, where she not only performed but conducted the convention’s Professional Flute Choir. Before and after, we visited longtime friends in the Atlanta area. I had found the locations of a dozen remnants of old-growth forests in and near Atlanta, and I dragged Dorli and our friends out for walks in a number of them, admiring “champion” trees of many species and the remains of the rich ecosystems that had sustained them for centuries. One of our friends asked me if I’d be painting Southern trees when I went home, and I told him I didn’t think so, but as soon as we got back I found myself doing this small painting of a particularly beautiful sycamore. I grew up in South Carolina, loving the countless giant sycamores, magnolias, tuliptrees, beeches, live oaks, and especially the old-growth longleaf pines of the South. This week I expect to return to painting the trees and boreal forest of Alaska, but who knows?