During the first two months of the year, Paul Gould will have 14 of his paintings displayed in the Cornwall Public Library.
While you can see them at any time in January or February, you may want to show up for the artist reception on Jan. 4. Mr. Gould can be as deft as a story teller as he is with a brush.
On Saturday afternoon, I visited his gallery on Hudson Street in Cornwall-on-Hudson. The gallery is like a museum. It’s filled with his paintings as well as his students’ artwork and his brother’s photographs. Mr. Gould keeps changing the window display so pedestrians and passing motorists don’t get tired of seeing the same thing. One of the recent occupants of the front window was a whimsical portrait of a giraffe.
A few days before the interview, Mr. Gould checked out the library room to see what it could accommodate. He’ll be installing his work on Jan. 2, and including a few Irish landscapes since the library will be hosting a tour of that nation later in the year.
“Painting in Ireland is a great experience,” Mr. Gould remarked. He and his students have painted on location there on several occasions. Most recently, they focused on the cliffs.
Some of the larger paintings weren’t finished until the group returned home to the United States. Mr. Gould acknowledged that he could have worked from a photograph, but seeing the landscape in person made a big difference.
Outdoor (or plein air) painting can have its challenges. Mr. Gould mentioned a contest where he portrayed bales of hay that had just been cut. He tried to move the bales so they would be arranged the way he wanted them. But it had just rained and the bales wouldn’t budge. So he relied on his imagination.
But the immobile bales weren’t the only outcome of the rain. The moist field was filled with flies that kept landing in the painting. Finally, the artist flicked them off and ran to his car.
When he shared the experience with the contest judge, he got an unusual reaction. “You should have left them,” the judge said. “It proves that you did the work outside.”
Besides his trips to Ireland, the artist has painted many local scenes. He recently was commissioned to paint Ring’s Pond as it looked in 1970. He consulted the Cornwall Historical Society and created a winter scene with a dog on the pond. He left out the gazebo because it hadn’t been built yet.
“You’re leaving a legacy,” Mr. Gould says of painting. “People tend to hang onto artwork. I feel honored when they ask me to restore something.”
He’s currently restoring six paintings and thinking ahead to his own creations. “I have big plans for the coming years,” he told me. Among those plans are a painting of the old Storm King movie theater as it would have appeared from the current location of the art gallery. It will require some research. The artist will probably be glad to tell you about it if you join him at the Jan. 4 reception between 1 and 3 p.m.
