John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation." He created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His impressionistic work is much beloved to this day. In 1916 - he painted Lake O'Hara in the Canadian Rockies. It is a stunning piece. 

Clyde Aspevig saw this painting at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard in 1975. He and his wife Carol have spent many happy days hiking through this area, and recently did his own view of Lake O’Hara from Sargent Point in celebration of the master. It measures 60 x 96 inches. 

​Clyde reached out to share the piece with Richard Ormond - one of the foremost authorities on John Singer Sargent and the former deputy director of the National Portrait Gallery and director of the National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory in Greenwich England. Ormond's reply is below: 

Dear Clyde, 

The catalogues have arrived for which best thanks. I wish I could see your paintings in the flesh, but even in reproduction they give great pleasure capturing the spirit of the west, those sweeping views across the prairie to distant mountains, great skies, mountains up-close, placid lakes and snow scenes. But you do near as well as far, and I enjoyed your close-ups of streams and plants. It was a clever idea to match more finished works with premiere coup sketches in the spreads. You don't include people but humanity is everywhere implied in the spectacle of nature.

I appreciated your kind words about my Sargent work. Like artists, art historians cast their work on the water never knowing if it will sink or swim, be appreciated and read, strike a chord and give pleasure, or sink without trace to the basement. That I have had so many responses to the Sargent catalogue raisonne makes the effort seem worthwhile and gives me the uplift to continue my work.

All good wishes
Richard

Another masterful painter, Ian McKibben White, had this to say about Clyde's new "Lake O'Hara."

"Mostly, Clyde, I want to enthuse about your magnificent painting of Lake O'Hara. Your "biggest painting ever." It's a real zinger! How big is it? Right up there on the scale of those Thomas Morans in Washington, D.C. I found as I study it, my eye travels into the painting at different speeds. I follow the logs from their tips above water down their submerged lengths to luxuriate in the depths of the emerald green water. When I surface I go left around the line of shallow rocks to find the opening to the far reaches of the lake. My eye climbs the reflection of the sunlit butte and past it, zigzagging up the  gorge... presumably the water source that supplies the lake from the snow above. I cross the snow fields and exit into the clouds in the sky. It's been an exhilarating journey. Now, I back off to take in the composition as a whole and admire the stands of trees left and right of center stage as if waiting in the wings to take part in the drama. In your honor and for a better chance to study the painting over time, I have made it my computer screen background image." 

More about Ian McKibben White and his work can be found here. 

This spring, we had a fantastic couple weeks in Berlin, Germany; Copenhagen and Northern Denmark, soaking up art and history. We spent time in Skagen, and the northernmost tip of Denmark, where the Skagen School of Painters had their art colony at the turn of the 20th century. Some of the highlights we wanted to share are below. - Clyde & Carol

"Family Ties"     48” x 48”
 oil on linen by Clyde Aspevig
 
All paintings originate in the mind of an artist through an emotional reaction to an experience. Being human, we like to impose our ideas on these emotions as a way to enhance and remember the experience.

Transcending the ordinary is one of the primary goals of the visual arts, and that is why the" idea "becomes the most essential part of its success or failure. It doesn't mean that the viewer of such art immediately understands the symbolism or metaphors that take shape in the process of developing an idea… it means that the artist uses the tools of technique in a more meaningful and profound way that will hopefully entice further inspection and wonderment.
 
FAMILY TIES, a 48 x 48 inch oil on linen, began as an emotional reaction to the view of the aspen grove out our window. Aspen are considered a weed, and they are attached to each other via a root system like our own human nervous system. The mother tree in this scene is the nurturing source of the grove.  My last name is also derived from the word aspen. In a way, I see the tree as my mother, rooted in the earth that sustains us. After living with the grove for a full season on our new property, I chose March as the month to paint the view…. on the edge of spring, but still melancholy enough to satisfy my Nordic roots.
 
I think the metaphors attached to the seasons in nature are obvious, but never boring, and constantly stirring our emotions in different ways as evident in our music, poetry, and fiction writing over time. The little aspen grove begins to inspire new thoughts and ideas as I experienced the character of its nuances through the seasons. During my period of observation, I noticed the repeating shapes in different forms …fractals, musicality, and the duality between the representational world and the birth of the abstract as another way to see the same image.
 
At the time I was developing these ideas, I just happened to be reading a book about the history of Echoes from the ancient Greeks to modern time. Trying to paint the idea of an echo on a flat, two dimensional surface using an aspen grove as the subject was very intriguing. Creating texture and scratching out surfaces in a painting to achieve an effect is nothing new. It's been done before. But using the idea of an echo to facilitate your image created a more powerful platform to express my idea. You can create soft and hard edges and a lot of texture all day long, but it has to have content of idea in order to become engaging to the human mind.
When you examine the surface texture of “FAMILY TIES”, you will see the ghosts of where the branches and trunks of trees were over a period of time…. their echo. The branches, the snow, and the sky are scratched, scrapped, and painted in layers…representing movement through time.
 
I think you can sense the vibrations, the syncopation, the sensuousness, of a living piece of land. It is not static, it is moving through time in an endless cycle of growth and change. I tried to make each square inch of the canvas an individual journey of discovery that exudes these ideas.
 
In the end, whether the idea succeeds or not depends on how far the viewer wants to go with it. Ultimately, the glance through an aspen grove can be just a brief visual delight …. but, with a little help from the artist, it can also evolve into a wonderful journey of discovery and imagination.
 
Clyde Aspevig