Peter Huntoon: “Spring Confluence”
This painting’s title can too-easily satisfy the uncurious viewer. Two streams of water, fresh with snowmelt, conjoin to form a larger body, rushing madly forward into the viewer. In fact, the larger body is Vermont’s Mad River. Knowing this adds to the frenzy of the growing cascade. Interesting, and expertly composed in Peter Huntoon’s trademark abstract realist style. But let’s move on.
Not so fast. A print of this painting hangs behind me in my workspace, so I view it several times a day. It’s one of my favorites of the many prints that hang in our home. At times, viewing it, I am reminded of the song Tony sings in West Side Story, “somethin’s comin’, somethin’ good…” Spring is comin’. Green newness eases forward from the background of the painting to the winter-blasted trees in the foreground, even beginning a slow surround on the high banks. Soon, green will be everywhere, carried forward, it appears, by the freshness released from the disappearing snow cover. That’s worth pondering—the mystery of spring, the sound of crashing streams, the slow rebirth of life.
Every viewer brings his own perspective to a painting. From my vantage point, the confluence of these two streams suggests two other confluences appropriate to the theme of newness. I think first of the fact that human beings are a composition of two conjoining streams, one of flesh and one of spirit. Deny one or the other, if only in thought or policy, and you end up with something less vibrant than the two together. Having endured the trial of winter—whatever our trial or affliction may have been—we are sustained by perseverance and hope and emerge in a springtime of life when both streams bring their separate vibrancy into one being.
And then, of course, I see in this confluence an invocation of the Son of God—fully man and fully God—Who in His coming breaks us free from the coldness and torpor of death into the spring of new life which He provides by grace through faith.
As in so many of his paintings, Peter Huntoon makes the beauty and wonder of Vermont, which is everywhere around us and thus easily ignored, come alive and speak to us of wonders and mysteries to which all creation bears witness. If you’re not a subscriber to Peter’s newsletter, “A Day in Vermont”, I encourage you to visit his website and join with the many who share in his love for beautiful things.
T. M. Moore