A New Year, A New Calendar

Every year I create a calendar with photographs that I have taken.  Usually the pictures are travel photos, but this year the theme is different.  Each month features a painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Last summer, I went to the museum with the express purpose of photographing paintings to use for the calendar.  The works were not necessarily my favorite paintings, but paintings which would be, when possible, appropriate for the month.

January's picture is a wintry scene painted by the American artist Grant Wood.  It is entitled "January", so it was a rather obvious choice for the calendar.

Grant Wood is best known for his painting "American Gothic".  (You surely would recognize the painting... the stern farmer holding a pitchfork and his prim daughter posing in front of their farmhouse.  Those of us who are old enough, remember the parody of the painting in the classic Country Corn Flakes commercial.)

Anyway, Wood did many other paintings beside "American Gothic".  This was one of his last paintings before his early death at the age of fifty.  The geometric array of snow-covered corn shocks has an almost abstract feel.  In the midst of this barren winter scene there is one sign of life... the rabbit tracks in the snow.

Here in Ohio, after the brutal Christmas storm, our January has begun nothing at all like the scene in the painting.  There is no snow, and the temperatures are well above normal.  Today's high is forecast to be 51 F, and on Tuesday we are supposed to reach 66 F!  The temperature is supposed to return to normal by Thursday, but there are no severe winter storms forecast to interfere with my departure for Mexico.  Fingers crossed! 

Best wishes to all my readers for a very happy new year!