Catherine Redmond

Tree with an Itch, 2021, Archival Digital Print

The Eastern Catalpa has frequent itching which Nicky helps treat. Now Nicky came to me three years ago, a stray who must have been left because she is spayed. About the same time another starving Maine Coon Cat — whom I also named Nicky aka Nicodemus because I thought they were both male — and because I had only glanced at both of them on separate occasions out of the corner of my eye and I thought they were the same cat. Slowly over the months this Nicky got closer. Today she is almost tame.  No touching though.  But, the other Nicky, the Maine Coon, now named Demus, remains very wary. Both have been fattened and are fed outside twice a day. One wonders at the callous treatment of these sensitive beings and also my good luck that they live with me on the land.  .

Truck and Red Maple, 2021, Archival Digital Print

The moment when conjunctions of two or three forms sit in the space with such precision and rightness, we know that surely the universe seems perfectly planned.  This Red Maple had a brother who was closer to the picture plane, but it was taken down in a wind storm several years ago.  The stump shows on the right,

Chickens and Geese, Archival Digital Print, 2021

I’m thinking here of those early French photographs I saw at The Met a long time ago. It was the Gilman Paper Photography Collection, a trove of early photographs that changed me.  That show altered the course of my thinking about photography and its possibilities.

Spring Morning, 2021, Archival Digital Print

At last! Spring! We earned it this year enduring a mean winter that even now is hanging on with its icy claws. Sleet/snow last Friday, can you imagine?

Everything is in bloom and I feel so grateful to have been guided up here to the Hudson Valley.  The land has taught me. I’ve become more sensitive to the quiet and the subtle changes in light and color, the goings on of wildlife and plants.

But more than that, I have had time to reflect more deeply on what painting and drawing demand.  It is remarkable what a simple piece of vine charcoal can do.  Even a pencil.  All the world of images ready to come out and be seen stored inside, it just waits for some talent to pick it up and begin.

Hens looking for Worms, 2021, Archival Digital Photo

We are entering the second spring of the Covid-19 Pandemic. We are changed in ways that will take years to recognize and assess. As much as we want to return to the Before-Time, it isn’t possible.The future is always new but now we are conscious of this with more dread than usual. The hens peck for new worms and don’t care.  They just enjoy the fresh green of the grass and the fact that they can spend the day outside.

The Night with Orion, 2021, Archival Digital Print

Last night, like always, I looked up at the stars

The dogs’ last visit to the run before we go to bed.

A new storm was coming in the morning.

Weather has become tiresome.

Up there Orion was where expected

His eternal trip around the sky.

We humans form patterns

Out of the random.

Expecting Show, 2021,Archival Digital Print, 2021

Suffused with longing for spring and yet an almost gasping consciousness of the spare beauty of deep winter.

Ours is a long season, longer and more expanded by the pandemic and isolation.

Longer and more shocking as memories of the Insurrection vomit up

On the clean snow

As we wait for more.

Right before the Snow Starts, Archival Digital Print with Hand Coloring, 2021

That time when the clouds are full and the air smells of it

Every living thing knows that something is

about to happen,

The colors seem so full of themselves

I rush to get back to the house

The flock fed and

watered

The house will feel

just right.