Returns To Painting
Shane's first new oil was painted towards the end of World War II. He called it "Exodus". It depicts a large rowboat full of people (refugees). It represents the movement of the Danish Jews to Sweden or just the plight of the Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazi extermination. He made a number of studies and paintings of this subject in various formats, impressionist to abstract. After the war he slowly started to paint again and continued to draw many pictures in pastel, gouache and charcoal. He didn’t exhibit again and kept most of his work or gave or sold them to friends and family.
During the war and after Shane would go out on weekends with the family and paint, usually water colors of the Hudson Valley towns and landscapes. He considered his paintings his children. He couldn’t bear to be parted from his family or art work. He began working in pastels which for many years was his favorite medium, fast and colorful.
He and Belle were devoted folk dancers and later square dancers. He made many pastels and sketches of folk and square dancing. Their younger two children, Joanne and Mathew, were jazz musicians. Jazz bands and scenes became another favorite subject for his art. The family also loved the ballet which was another subject of his art. In later years he included klezmer bands and other Jewish subjects. Although he never became religious he moved from ignoring Jewish subjects to including them in many of his works as he grew older. Trips to Mexico, Puerto Rico and Israel provided subject matter for his painting in later years.
Read more about this topic: Samuel Lewis Shane
Famous quotes containing the words returns to, returns and/or painting:
“Only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small- minded.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor, Where I in lust and joy
With a king’s son my childish years did pass
In greater feast than Priam’s sons of Troy?
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour;”
—Henry Howard, Earl Of Surrey (1517?–1547)
“I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)