Hidden Hopper

In this painting the trees in the foreground screen the Hopper and Mount Greylock, and the downhill road leads on behind the trees as well.  This painting is a 12x16 oil on panel.

I'm still reading Walter Jackson Bate's biography of John Keats, a great young man faced with immense obstacles, who possessed an enormous gift.  Bate was also a wise man:

"In reading a poem, in contemplating any work of art, we may genuinely feel that active coalescence of the diverse.  But when we come to speak about it, we have to proceed consecutively: one thing has to be mentioned before another; in the process of noticing them individually, we find some considerations striking us more than others, if only because in our own phrasing of them we begin to tap essential concerns within ourselves; and we are led by the momentum of our own cooperating eloquence to narrow our interpretation. (A great work, of course, not only permits but invites that eager subjective response to different parts of it.) Moreover, the existence of previous commentary further specializes our attitude if we feel called upon to contribute our mite.  For in the heat of debate, or even in the honest desire to return to the amplitude of the work of art, our recoil from what we consider to be partial, single-minded interpretations encourages us to champion those details that we feel were overlooked, and to contradict or minimize considerations that we might otherwise have wished only to supplement."