Wanderlust

Wanderlust
24″ x 30″
Oil Painting
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Wanderlust is a painting about restlessness and it harks back to the 1800’s and the strong urge of people in Europe to immigrate to America.  For that matter it is about immigration of any period and time…the hunger for new worlds, new experience. The two boys are feelings I had while working on the painting of my great grandfather who immigrated to America from Denmark, and his older brother. They had no idea where they would end up.  They had no photographs or books that would give them a clear picture of the world ahead, only the restlessness and the hunger for a new life.  They ended up in Utah where the one brother settled near Price. My Grandfather worked in the mines in American Fork Canyon where he met my great grandmother.  They built a small house in Alpine Utah where I grew up many years later.  As I look at the painting I realize that their gaze is not focused towards the viewer but toward the ship which lingers restlessly in the harbor. It is the key to their future.  The colors suggested sunset in the land of their memories at the same time it suggests the sunrise of a new beginning.