The most dangerous ones
"Some Artists Are Models Too,'' by Robert Henry, in his show opening Aug. 19 at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.
Not great at pastoral care
'The Minister's Black Veil,'' by Varujan Boghosian, in his show at the Berta Walker Gallery Wellfleet (Mass.) through Aug. 21.
Not an acceptable circus act
"Dream Drawing With Stallions'' (mixed media on paper), by Nancy Ellen Craig (1927-2015), in the show "Renaissance Dream Paintings,'' at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, May 6-July 5.
Giants from childhood
Sculpture by PENELOPE JENCKS, at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.
She has been creating oversized sculptures that depict naked adults who are middle aged and older. The gallery says her idea is for the figures "to have the same relationship to the viewer as her own parents and parents' friends did to her when she was a child.''
That reminds me: I was a party on a porch in South Dartmouth, Mass., the other day. I was much enjoying talking with all these interesting old people. Then I remembered, with a start, that they're my contemporaries.
The old cliche about having young children came to mind: "the days are long and the years are short.''
Artists on the edge
"Clam Warden's Domain at Dawn'' (oil on canvas), by SALVATORE DEL DEO, in a show opening Aug. 14, at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.
He focuses on the Outer Cape's dunes, clam flats, sea, solitude, shacks and fishermen in all weather, and his work speaks to their relationship with Provincetown's large and storied arts community, in all its moods, fads, sociability and reclusiveness.
The somewhat weird effects of having a busy town like Provincetown so close to a wilderness of vast dunes adds, we suspect, to the area's allure to so many artists, more than a few of them very eccentric.
'and our little life is rounded with a sleep'
"Floating'' (oil on canvas), by SKY POWER, in the group show "Mystical Landscapes,'' at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Mass., July 27-Aug. 9.
'Made in Provincetown'
Ink and watercolor on paper from "Made in Provincetown'' series of drawings and watercolors by HANS HOFMANN, at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.
Isn't it pretty to think so?
"Love in the Universe" (0il/gold leaf on canvas), by the late SELINA TRIEFF, via Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.
The year-round locals are relieved
"Summer's Exodus'' (oil on canvas), by Sky Power, in her recently concluded show at Berta Walker Gallery, in Provincetown.
P-Town: Where the buoys and boys are
"Buoys'' (oil on canvas), by PAUL RESIKA, at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, in his show Aug. 1-Aug. 17.
Red skies
"Red Sky'' (oil on canvas), by PAUL RESIKA, at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, in his Aug. 1- Aug. 17 show.
My father and others in our coastal town liked to say the old line:
"Red sky in morning, sailors take warning/ Red sky at night, sailor's delight.''
But I never found much connection between the time of day that the sky, or at least the horizon, was red, and coming storminess or good weather.
It was just another bit of comforting folk malarkey.
-- Robert Whitcomb
Story for 50 years hence
"Day's Catch'' (collage), by VARUJAN BOGHOSIAN, at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.
'Botanical archaeology'
"Highway Into the Void'' (oil on canvas), by PETER WATTS, in his June 20-July 6 show at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown.
The blurb for his show says that "he is always aware of the history of human touch that nature quickly covers over.'' The gallery calls his approach "botanical archeology.''
It said that Mr. Watts, who lives in Wellfleet, "sometimes paints houses based on his knowledge of local history coupled with discoveries like a long-abandoned cellar hole....A stand of pines on top of a knoll is a former pasture returned to seed, surrounded by the oak forests that will one day conquer it.''
Of course, much of New England, especially mostly densely populated southern New England, was once farmland. Despite the overall increase in the region's population, much of it has gone back to scrub or woods, leaving layers of ghosts.
The rise of "locavore'' agriculture, whose products are targeted at affluent suburbanites and urbanites, seems unlikely to return much of this land to open farmland, as popular as those farmers' markets, heavy laden with "organic'' produce, seem to be.
Through all this are what Mr. Watts sees as "nature's changing patterns and the patterns that repeat themselves.'' He said he used to be "more interested in the landscape itself. Now I look at how an abstract element of a landscape feels.''
This reminds me (Robert Whitcomb) of Alan Weisman's eerie coffee-table book The World Without Us, a nonfiction book about what the human-built environment might look like when humans disappear.
A hard-won crop
"Shuckers'' (Homage to the Patricia Marie Series, 1976-2001, oil on canvas) by SALVATORE DEL DEO, at the Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, through March 8.
Tedious work but not nearly as unpleasant as being out on a cold wet clam flat and raking them up. No wonder they're so expensive.