[IMAGE, Top of page]: "The Slanting Silo", oil.

Woodward used many of the basic procedures in preparing and painting a canvas that were common to most landscapists. Often starting with a preliminary drawing in a sketchbook, he recorded his first impressions. Next came a charcoal sketch on the canvas used as a guide for the pigments which followed. He worked directly from the scene he was painting whenever possible, even during the winter, dressed in a fur coat and stocked with a day's supply of hot coffee. He usually took him four to five days to complete a canvas. He was unable to step back from a painting to observe it in perspective, and to compensate for this he learned to "unfocused" his eyes and achieve the same effect. After finishing the canvas he would sometimes give his signature a touch a variety by using red paint for the "S" in Strong.

Spring brought sap buckets, melting snow, and a wealth of fresh greens to the countryside and therefore to Woodward's canvases. The well-known red buckets that hang on the maple trees throughout New England, as in "Spring Silhouette", herald is season dear too many people. Mud on the thawing road is portrayed in a pallet of browns, reds and greys but cannot overpower the new life caught in the butting twigs and brilliant blue sky. He loves to paint sugar houses, inside and out, and the smell of boiling sap is easily imagined in the smoke rising from the chimney. "Early Sugaring" is a fine example of his success in capturing the atmosphere of "sugaring". In it the reconstruction of light hues and the glorious blue skies harmonize to perfection.

"At Lilac Time" is a spring painting with the season well-advanced. A noticeable refining of his brushstrokes in the grasses, bushes and trees of this canvas give the field in the foreground a texture fit for the bees in the summer and the scythe in the fall. The flowering lilac bushes add the extra touch of life to the old farmhouse which appears to have seen them so many times before. The blending of greens from olives to emerald ads a flowing laziness to canvases like "Down the Hill Road" and "Summer Peace". Even their names suggest a broad view and awaken old memories.

The intensity of color that accompanies the fall...