Landscape painting has been an American tradition for over 200 years. As John Driscoll writes in the opening pages of The Artist and the American Landscape, "There is a sense of awe in the land’s vastness, its diverse nature, and its wild, unknown character. From the moment of the first prayers … at Plymouth Colony, the pioneering spirit was blessed with the assurance that the new land was Eden on earth, a place for humankind to build a New World." Today, we are often more aware of our destructive effect on the land than were those early colonists, but something in our very souls crave the beauty of the natural world as God created it.

Mary Prince stands squarely in the tradition of landscape painting, with her luminous images of sea and sky, forested islands and rocky shorelines. However, unlike those artists who are content to let each canvas capture a single, perfect moment, Prince uses her fascination with light to create paintings that convey a sense of time as well as space. Like Monet setting out to paint his haystacks, Mary Prince goes to the same spot at the same time every day, or every week, or at varying times of day, and records what she sees at each new moment. In this way, six, or twelve, or fifteen images of the same scene make their way onto a single canvas over a period of days or weeks or months. As the light and the seasons change, each image reveals something new about the scene, a new color, a new set of relationships between water and land.

The result is not unlike successive photographs taken from the same vantage point, or single frames of a motion picture, laid out in orderly rows and columns. Paradoxically, Prince paints only from observation, and says she doesn’t really know how to use a camera. Taken singly, each image might be thought too sentimental, too pretty. Seen together on a single canvas, they become a record not only of the land, but of the artist’s discipline to paint what she sees, not what she thinks ought to be there. This is a discipline of truthfulness that extends into the spiritual realm, as well.

This exhibition is in honor of Trever Bennett, whose luminous paintings of the American Southwest were shown here three years ago. We are grateful to Ms Bennett, and to her brother, Winston Trever, for their generosity in making this exhibition possible.