Lacy Grasses

Roswell Weidner loved to paint outdoors in New Jersey’s renowned Pine Barrens.  With his easel and pastels on board, he navigated a small boat through the austere beauty of its brown cedar rivers and cranberry bogs.  The places where the water meets the land offered him a realm of challenging subjects.

The water in Reflections, Weidner's other painting owned by the Convention Center, is not directly visible.  All that’s seen in that painting is the mirrored sky and broken reeds.  If not for the distant shoreline, you might think the stalks were strange letters written on a blue canvas.  However, Lacy Grasses, shown here, on the other hand, reverses the view, filling the canvas with delicate tracings floating under the receding summer brightness.

Weidner's paintings may look as if he captured exactly what lay before his eyes.  But the artist explain that he painted "what I wanted to see."  This masterful mixture of purposeful choices and keen observations transformed the Pine Barren's untamed marsh grass and water into artful patterns of intense and intimate color.