‘Luminescent isolation’
“I Come from a Place Where No One Has Ever Been’’ (oil on canvas), by Ann Young, at Catamount Arts center in St. Johnsbury, Vt. She lives in Barton, Vt., not far from St. Johnsbury, the cultural center of Vermont’s “Northeast Kingdom’’.
The center says: Young’s outsize oil embodies a surreal luminescent isolation in both the background landscape and the foreground of a girl’s face. If you go in person, and linger, it may remind you of looking at “Girl with a Pearl Earring’’ (1665), by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.
St. Johnsbury hosts the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium which opened in 1891 as a gift of Franklin Fairbanks, a businessman, naturalist and philanthropist, to the community. His donated collections remain northern New England’s most extensive natural history display, and the National Register-listed building is a splendid example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style.
Aerial view of beautiful by remote Barton
— Photo by King of Hearts
Savoring daily variations
Panoramic view of Willoughby Notch and Mount Pisgah, in Vermont’s “Northeast Kingdom.’’
— Photo by Patmac13
“Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same.’’
“True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.’’
— Edward Hoagland, essayist, nature and travel writer and novelist. He lives in Barton, Vt., in the “Northeast Kingdom’’ in the summer and relatively mild Martha’s Vineyard in the winter.