Literary / Arts
Black Night, Russell’s Corner
Bill Johnson, Fredericton, NB
Volume 34 Issue 7, 8 & 9 | Posted: October 11, 2020
A few years ago while on a tour of southern Maine we spent a night at a hotel near Portland. Portland remains one of my favorite destinations, an historic Oceanside gem and home of many of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings. But it is neither those paintings nor the city that I wish to remark upon but rather a small brochure in the lobby of our hotel.
Inside this brochure was a minuscule photo of a painting that caught my eye. It was so small that I was forced to peer at it with the aid of a bright light.
A few years ago while on a tour of southern Maine we spent a night at a hotel near Portland. Portland remains one of my favorite destinations, an historic Oceanside gem and home of many of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings. But it is neither those paintings nor the city that I wish to remark upon but rather a small brochure in the lobby of our hotel.
Inside this brochure was a minuscule photo of a painting that caught my eye. It was so small that I was forced to peer at it with the aid of a bright light.
I was intrigued by the image of a barnyard at night illuminated by a bright yard light, a light that dwindled as it spread to the dark outer edges of the yard. Small as it was it had a major impact…at least for me it did. There was no attribution, no name given to the painting. I stuffed the brochure in a jacket pocket which I repeatedly retrieved over the course of the next week to study the tiny postage stamp reproduction. I became mesmerized to the point of obsession with its poignant contrasts and shadows which I could only barely perceive.
When we were home again I decided to find the painting and its author by sleuthing on the internet. It took some effort but after punching in a variety of descriptions I found it.
It is called “Black night, Russell’s Corner” by George Ault, an American painter from Ohio, active in the 30’s, 40’s, a member of the Precisionist group, whose proponents include Sheeler and Crawford. I am no fan of precisionism but this painting did resonate and still does. But I digress…George Ault was a loner and a recluse, product of a wealthy family who lost everything in the stock market crash of 1929. He left a reasonably successful career in New York City for Woodstock NY where he lived in poverty in a shack with no running water and no electricity with his wife Louise.
On December 30, 1948 he walked out into a late night storm and never returned. They found him days later drowned in a stream and concluded that he had committed suicide. After a all this time I still cling to the belief that this one image of his, a lonely barnyard lit by a solitary street lamp, a vestige of his tormented soul, was caught by a winter storm’s wind and sailed northeast to settle over me, newly born, a blank canvas so to speak, in Fredericton. There had to be something serendipitous in this encounter.
Bill Johnson is a painter of some repute whose birthday happens to be Dec. 30, 1948. His wife is Dawn Russell.
Bill Johnson, Fredericton, NB