O'Keeffe on Lake George

Here, in Lake George Autumn the shore is wiped away.  Water seems to be drawn to the feet of those hills and into the shadowy base of them.  Water touches land with a dark and dramatic flair.  This place seem inaccessible for its lack of ground to stand on.  I want to go here and see this very place, but what time of day would I arrive?  How do I get myself there?  I want to find clues in the painting and go.   

The foreground shows bright reds and yellows at the tops of tree branches, while the background mimics the eye's focus with muddled colors and arching color shoots.  The island in the middle left of the painting marks the transition from detailed to undefined as the eye moves into the background.  The viewer stands tall and overlooks the scene, though not tall enough to surpass the height of the mountains beyond.  The viewer is directly confronted by their size. 

It's bright.  The sun seems to set behind the viewer's back, illuminating the foreground's tree leaves.  An unseen mountain casts a shadow onto the lake's water as the sun falls behind it.  Then, in the sky and clouds, an unsourced light brightens the top fourth of the painting.  The clouds are still bright from a noonday sun and only barely touched by the dark cloud that passes just above the painting's frame.

         

Abstract or descriptive?  I have to ask myself this often when looking at O'Keeffe paintings. Why is the sky such a bright blue?  Maybe, instead of sunset, it's daybreak and the sky is ready before anything else.  Maybe this scene doesn't exist at any particular time of day.  O'Keeffe must have stood here many times to see all of it.  Maybe I will have to go many times to recreate it.  The depth of the blue in the lake water might only come through at dusk.  There will have to be a storm one day to darken the tops of the background mountains, but only a small passing one.  Fall must be in its crescendo.  And there will have to be a day that's so clear that the sky stays that blue at every hour.