Church and Three Buildings 1961

Donald Greason made this small painting of a church and three buildings in shades of grey, black and white. You can imagine him, maybe on a cold day, trying to capture this scene in front of him, quickly, using thin paint and his memory of color. I'm thinking that this church, like all churches, is trying to point upwards with its spire, but somehow this one doesn't quite make it. The overall cloud of grey surrounding the buildings weighs it down, pulling us back to earth. The loose strokes that define the landscape have a tentative quality as if to suggest a feeling of impermanence. For me, there is a sense of unfinished business here, which is okay! The beauty of painting, the ongoing exchange of ideas between artists and viewers, is precisely this embrace of ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations rather than fixed readings.