This has been a year for walking. With the Covid-19 restrictions that science, precaution, and fear have engendered, many of us have found solace in the great outdoors. Mountain trails, country roads, urban parks – all of these outdoor spaces saw ballooning numbers of people walking this year. Day to day, through the seasons, we’ve been stepping out and observing – rambling alone, with dogs, or with neighbors – all walking to move toward a state of mental and physical well-being.
The pleasures and health benefits of walking have long been extolled. Many of the greatest creative minds in history: Aristotle, Beethoven, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Vincent van Gogh, Susan Fenimore Cooper, and Georgia O’Keeffe have all credited the practice of walking with being integral to their creative process. And so it is with Dan Gottsegen, a lifelong artist with a parallel lifelong practice of hiking. Gottsegen finds creative energy and spiritual awakening through walking, his work fed by his ongoing wilderness explorations and meditations. On being in the woods, he says, “As a painter, much of my time is spent in lone conversation with this thing in front of me, this quiet thing of great potential power and unneedy desire.”
The kaleidoscopic nature of Walking Life II seems to echo the way the mind wanders when walking in the woods and traveling through the seasons. What are the things we focus on and let into our consciousness? What things do we edit out? How do disparate elements join together in a continuum? This large, energetic painting is a balanced assemblage of landscapes – an exploration full of color, texture, and varying perspectives – much like the world looks to us on our long lifetime ambles.
Dan Gottsegen lives and works in rural Vermont. In addition to his studio work, he has done several large-scale public art projects including the South Burlington,Vermont, City Center Gateway and Art Meets Science at the Vermont State Forensics Lab. Among Gottsegen’s awards are a Vermont Arts Council Individual Artist Creation Grant and the Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Massachusetts. Gottsegen was an associate professor of painting at UMass/Lowell and taught for years at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He has a BA from Brown University and an MFA in painting from California College of the Arts. He may be reached through his website.