Shadows on Roads

Do roads exist just to highlight shadows?

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Some of Margit’s best works are arguably those with roads and the shadows that fall across them. It’s almost as if the roads are there just to highlight the shadows of presences (such as trees) that loom just out of view.

  • ID: 61-05 “Fall street”
  • Details: 16″ x 20″ / KEPT
  • Comment: An early painting that Margit kept in an upstairs bedroom. A Margit drew a contemporary house that wouldn’t be unusual in the 1950s, a straight road that heads off into a vanishing point in the trees. Margit rarely includes buildings so close to the viewer. And roads are usually curving, not heading straight off into a vanishing point. The balance between domesticity (the home) and going places (the road).

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  • Details
  • Comment: This road shows more shadows than sunlight. At the height of fall. These scene looked very different a few weeks earlier and would look different in a few more weeks. Fleeting moment on a road you can’t see down.

  • ID: 60-19 “Fall road”
  • Details: 16″ x 20″ / Orig price: $10 / Initial owner: O&N Landsverk
  • Comment = Ignore the deer standing at the side of the road. Compare this road picture to the previous picture. The shadows on the road have a more watercolor-like appearance.

  • ID: 69-05 “Road by lake fall”
  • Details: 16″ x 20″ / Orig price: $10 / Initial owner: F Thronson
  • Comment: The shadows may be minimal in this fall picture of thinning trees. But the trail curves away out of sight.

  • ID: 68-41 “Violet eve road”
  • Details: 16″ x 20″ (portrait) / Orig price: $5 / Initial owner: R&F Nowland
  • Comment: The previous paintings are set in the fall, where the shadow of winter is starting to creep into the picture. Here, the time is high summer, though the color violet may not be captured in this photograph, Margit commented once she was surprised to realize how much violet she saw in the countryside. This picture may be as close as Margit gets to impressionism in her brush “strokes”.

Two later versions of “Violet Road”

Near right = xx-xx
Far right = xx-xx

  • ID: 71-37 “Fall colors birch & path”
  • Details: 16″ x 20″ / Orig price: $15 / 1st owner: Mihus
  • Comment: Most of the roadways Margit painted were the small roads of her memories. But it’s unusual for Margit to go as small as a walking path. Even here, though, the shadows fall along the way.