Stephen Hannock , "The Oxbow"

This painting at the Met revitalized my interest in, and belief in, good painting, particularly significant because it is a realistic landscape painting. This is a brilliant painting - extremely large, probably 10 feet long, it has a lusciousness and beauty to the paint that one rarely sees these days. Also, though it is not visible in the photo, the painting is covered in inscriptions written in cursive that follow the lines of the fields, the flow of the river, etc. The one I wrote in my notebook, which appears at the lower right corner of the painting, reads: "Gordo the wacko almost blew Jimmy's head off with an M-80". What he was doing was assigning an inscription to a particular location on the painting where an event (real or imagined) occured or direction was given. Parts of the painting give directions to nearby towns, or point out locations of farms or events that happened in history. Add this to the fact that he's revisiting a site painted by the legendary Hudson school painters, and recasting it in a modern light, does everything for me that painting today should.

More on this work at http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/recent_acquisitions/2000/co_rec_n_america_2001.153_L.asp

I found the Met's description of the painting rather bland.