Book Review: Snowshoe Heaven

If the idea of stopping by woods on a snowing evening sends shivers up your spine, wait until you step into Thomas Paquette’s new book, Thomas Paquette: Gouaches (Eyeful Press, 2007) and its frosty painting, “Veil of Snow.” Like many of the works in this published collection, the mysterious landscape is revealed in scattered light and layers of color, drawing you deeper inside the natural world. 

For a guided tour, visit www.thomaspaquette.com. Paquette's paintings are more like conversations, he says, and he revels in the places that inspired the creative process. He was, after all, a naturalist before he became a painter.

Known for his large-scale oil paintings and singled out by art historians and contemporary critics as a master painter, this Warren, Pa., resident will remind you of the Explorer Artists of the American West, the forward observers who captured the grandeur of places like Yellowstone and Yosemite in the late 1800s.

But the wild places in Paquette’s book of 110 full-color paintings are different. They tend to whisper, not roar, and it’s no wonder—these paintings, made from layers of opaque water color paint called “gouache,” are tiny. How an artist can compress such spectacular vistas into what amounts to only a few square inches is beyond me, but Paquette manages to render you speechless, the same way a visit to the rim of the Grand Canyon can, whether you are looking at his painting of a blueberry bog in Maine or clouds over Hungry Jack Lake. Choosing from hundreds of fine brushes, he meticulously details the cotton rag paper with of layers of pigment suspended in water, and once it dries, scratches through the delicate surface again and again until he is finally satisfied he has created something entirely new from the original he painted on the scene, or “en plein air.” The art, like nature, is in the details.

Paquette’s work is housed museums, galleries and collections all over the world, including U.S. Embassies in Athens, Chad, Phnom Penh, Rome, St. Petersburg, Santiago, Taipei and Vienna.  Many of his paintings are drawn from his experience as an artist-in-residence at Yosemite, Rocky Mountain and Acadia National Parks, on the Greek Island of Lesvos, and in Wales and France.

These days Thomas finds himself in the Allegheny National Forest after a lifetime of travel, painting views that even the most observant backpackers might fail to see.

“Each painting becomes like the environment itself, always shifting, ever changing,” says Paquette from his studio in Warren, the town where his wife Ellen grew up. “Whatever color I put down affects the next color.”

Ellen, who plays harp in a Celtic trio called Anam Cara, says the forest has become their own Brigadoon, an enchanted village in the Scottish Highlands that comes to life one day every 100 years.  She senses the magic in the tall-standing trees, mosses, lichens and fallen leaves that inspire her husband’s large oil paintings and diminutive gouaches.

Thomas Paquette: Gouaches includes an essay by art historian Sally Mansfield, curator in the ART in Embassies Program of the U.S. Department of State. 128 pp., hardcover and softcover editions. Eyeful Press, 2007. For more information, visit www.thomaspaquette.com.

Reviewer Lisa Gensheimer is the author of Pennsylvania Wilds: Images from the Allegheny National Forest, an illustrated history featuring the fine-art photographs of Ed Bernik. "Showshoe Heaven" is adapted from a review first published in the Erie Times News Showcase, and is shared here with permission.