Kesler Woodward

New Works Ready for a New Exhibition

September 2, 2024

These are just a few of my new paintings in the studio, awaiting transport to Well Street Art Gallery here in Fairbanks for an exhibition with 3 outstanding artist friends–Todd Sherman, Jim Brashear, and Bonni Brooks–all of whom live on our short street. “Merlin Lane Artists” opens this Friday, September 6, from 5-8 pm at Well Street Art Gallery in Fairbanks.

Todd, Jim, and I were colleagues for many years in the University of Alaska Art Department, and Bonni, another longtime friend, is an extraordinary tapestry weaver. We all now live just a few doors apart in Taiga Woodlands, a forested subdivision in the hills overlooking Fairbanks, and we thought it would be great fun to show our very different work together.

A Few Acres of Snow ©Kesler Woodward Acrylic on Canvas 54″ x 84″

At 4 1/2 feet by 7 feet, A Few Acres of Snow will be my largest painting in the exhibition. This big, celebratory scene of winter in all its glory was the centerpiece of a solo exhibition of my work in Montreal several years ago, but I have never shown it in the U.S. I am excited to have it back and to show it here. The fun title, suggested by the gallery in Montreal, is what the 18th Century French writer Voltaire called Canada in his most famous work, the novella Candide.

Mysteries ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Acrylic on Canvas 30″ x 24″

Right now, summer is waning after months of continuous light in Interior Alaska, and darkness is beginning to steal back into the late hours of twilight. There is richer color in the clear evening skies, and real night is trying to slip in around the edges. I’m always intrigued by the mystery and wonder of that inexorable invasion.

Celestial ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Acrylic on Canvas 24″ x 30″

The stars, which I’ve missed all summer, come back in September.

Snow Music ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Acrylic on Canvas 24″ x 30″

And the coming snow is on my mind. I love the months of continuous summer light, but as the days get rapidly shorter, I begin to look forward to the first falling snow. It is only truly dark here for brief periods in the spring and fall. When the last snow disappears in late April or early May, and it’s not yet light all night, we have darkness for a few hours each evening. Again in early autumn, when the days grow shorter and the nights longer, for a little while we have real darkness. But soon, the brilliant white snow will start to settle softly not just on the trails and forest floor, but on every twig and branch in the woods, and every bit of ambient light from the moon, the stars, or the lights of our homes is reflected and multiplied a thousandfold. It is never truly dark here in winter. In Snow Music, I’m dreaming in the fall about the colors of winter.

Merlin Birch ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 20″ x 10″

And birches…always more birches…

Whether gathering wild lowbush cranberries (lingonberries) in our own wooded yard or running with friends on the endless forest trails that lead from our back door, I am surrounded by the birches I love. I can’t remember a year when I haven’t painted some of their portraits.

I go back and forth between painting in oils and painting in acrylics. The ethereal light of the northern sky seems to me to require the myriad thin layers of transparent acrylic I employ to try to capture some of its magic. But the bark of the birches, just as beautiful but marked by scars, peeling layers of growth, and other events in their lives, is more physical. The life of a birch is written not just in its form, but in its “skin,” and celebrating that this year has seemed to me to call for the greater sensuality of oils.

Woodland Neighbors ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 24″ x 30″

Twins ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 30″ x 24″

Oils and Acrylics

April 23, 2024

Aglint ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Acrylic on Canvas 36″ x 48″

As I’ve said in this space many times, I never know (or even think about) what I’m going to paint next until I finish a painting and am about to start a new one. I never, ever work on more than one painting at a time, and while I’m working on that painting, it’s all I can think about. When it’s finished, it goes on the studio wall out of the way. As I put up a new canvas, I start to ponder what I want to paint next, and at the same time, whether I want to work in acrylics or oils. For me, paintings that are about light, like this one, seem to need to be in acrylic, so that the light can pass through the transparent pigment, bounce off the pure white of the primed canvas, and return to the viewer’s eye almost as if backlit.

Aglint was painted in the last days of winter, as the glorious light of the long season of cold was just beginning to change to the burgeoning light of spring. I’m always excited that the days are growing longer, of course, but I always want to cling just a little longer to the crisp snow on the branches in the forest and the magical light that fills the winter woods.

Brothers ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 20″ x 16″

The birch portraits, by contrast, often seem to want the richer, fleshier sensuality of oils. As I walk out my door, I greet the birches which I pass by every day like old friends, noting the way the shifting light brings out their individual colors and the way they change as they age, season by season and year by year. And as we walk or run on the endless trails through the surrounding forest, I invariably spot new ones, wondering why I hadn’t noticed this one or that one before.

The woods are dense with these tall, thin trunks. I can almost never see a single tree in its entirety, in isolation. I always feel like I’m greeting new ones face-to-face, and so I seem to always paint them eye-to-eye.

Taiga Birch ©Kesler Woodward 2024 Oil on Canvas 20″ x 10″

A New Exhibition and New Paintings in Oils

February 18, 2024

I have just returned from Reno, Nevada, where my latest solo exhibition of 16 new paintings opened with a terrific reception at Stremmel Gallery on February 8. I am so grateful to be able to show my work in that big, beautiful, museum-like space, and to have my work represented by the outstanding and supportive people there. A number of paintings in the exhibition have already been claimed by collectors, but the full exhibition will be up through March 9. You can see the gallery’s online catalog of the exhibition here.

Since shipping the last paintings for that exhibition more than a month ago, I have of course been back in the studio and hard at work. I go back and forth, over the years, between painting in acrylics and painting in oils, and for the first time in almost a decade, I’ve started working again in oils. For the last month I’ve been coming in from the studio late every night, saying to Dorli, “I’d almost forgotten what a joy it is to push thick, sensual oil paint around on large canvases. I’m having such a good time!”

I’ve painted “birch portraits” like these for more than forty years, continually amazed by the variety and beauty of these trees as I walk and run the trails of the boreal forest. I paint other subjects–mountains, skies, the light of dawn and dusk, and more–but sooner or later I always return to these beautiful trees. They have long taken the place of people in my paintings—in their individuality, their strength, their vulnerability…in the way what happens to them in their lives is written in their “skin.”

But I also love the other trees in the northern forest–spruces, larches, poplars, and especially the aspens that are as plentiful as the birches surrounding our home. Many people here think of all the trees in our local forest, and all the trees in my paintings, as birches. But comparing this big (4 ft. x 5 ft.) painting of bold aspen trunks, Olden Dances, with the slender birches of Three Graces speaks directly, I think, to the quite different character of these mainstays of the boreal forest.

The leaves of aspens, which the ancients called “Whispering Trees,” tremble in our summer winds, and their tall trunks sway gently, dance slowly, even in the near-total calm of our long winters. I think they are dreaming of the coming spring.

Solo Exhibition at Stremmel Gallery in Reno, NV – Opening February 8

February 6, 2024

My second solo show at Stremmel Gallery in Reno, Nevada opens this Thursday night, February 8. If you are anywhere near Reno this week, please stop by and say hello at the opening reception!

For more info on the exhibition, and to see a full online catalog of the 16 paintings, click on this link:

Following the North Star – Paintings by Kesler Woodward

Or you can go directly to the online catalog here!