Shelburne 1966

Donald Greason made this drawing, Shelburne, in 1966. The landscape’s composition is divided horizontally into two distinct tiers, each presenting a slightly different perspective on the winter scene. Note how the sketch lines give it structure. The upper tier captures a cluster of buildings nestled amidst bare trees, rendered in muted grays and browns. The lower section provides a closer view of additional structures and winter foliage, with annotations scrawled in the margins of the drawing, almost like an incomplete colour palette: ‘stone green’ and ‘white in white’. These textual fragments disrupt the visual field, drawing attention to the constructed nature of representation and challenging any singular reading. The annotations, combined with the loose, sketch-like quality, further undermine the notion of a fixed or finished image. Greason’s Shelburne invites us to question the stability of meaning in art, instead focusing on the fluidity of interpretation.