EDGE OF THE SEA #2

                                                            acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40"
     
Our family is pleased to announce the donation of Dad's painting, Edge of the Sea #2 to Laboure' College in Milton, Massachusetts.  This donation, like several others before it, was facilitated by the wonderful agency, The Art Connection, which provides Boston area non-profit agencies with a storehouse of art to choose from.  Thank-you to everyone who made it possible for this painting to hang in a public setting and be enjoyed as it was meant to be.  A letter from Laboure' Colleges says this work "will help with bringing inspiration and life to our students on a daily basis."

Sunset on Cape Cod Bay

This rosy painting has no name, so I have given it one, Sunset on Cape Cod Bay.  It's 38 x 48."  Dad usually titled his paintings on the canvas where it wraps around the stretcher, but I couldn't find anything on this beauty except a label from an exhibition at the Rockport Art Association, unfortunately not dated.   Even with its predominant rosy reds, this painting has a stillness that evokes the end of the day.

Before the Storm

With the assistance of The Art Connection in Boston, "Before the Storm" has just been donated to Whidden Hospital.   Whidden serves the communities of Everett, Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop and Malden, MA.    We, the family, are please to have Dad's work going to public collections where it can be appreciated by many for years to come.

This is an acrylic on canvas in Dad's favorite size, 30 x 40."

Taos Trees

Imagine having the energy to paint like this in one's eighties! It's a large painting, 33.5 x 47.5", done after a trip to Taos early one October in the 1990's. Dad was obviously thrilled by the colorful, expansive vistas we drove through, and kept a clear memory to paint from. He records the extremes of color and value that occur in high mountain light, and sets up a contrast between the close, dark forest and a distant mountaintop.

Dad had also been looking at Wolf Kahn's paintings at this time. You can see him trying out Khan's simplified compositional sense, and succeeding. The desire to try something new remained a hallmark of the Sorgman career right up to the end.

Abstracting the Landscape

In this large landscape, one of my favorites, Dad succeeded in painting a marvelous tapestry of abstract color that also evokes the sand dunes of Cape Cod. Most wonderful is the turquoise high on the left that is obviously painted over/after what lies beneath it, and yet stands for a distant inlet of water. To the viewer, it is seemingly both close and far away, both floating above the picture plain and also obviously a flat stroke of paint.

One of Dad's practices was to turn a painting over, and even on its side, to test the validity of the composition from all directions. It had to "work," as he put it. In my mind's eye, I can see him turning this painting and finding it good.