OUR EVER-CHANGING MOODS: SPRING’S TIMELY ARRIVAL AT COPLEY SOCIETY

As its artist prospectus had called for artwork to “celebrate the unexpected beauty of winter and the promise of spring,” taking a train trip whose tracks traveled alongside woods, streams and hills was the perfect preparation to review the Copley Society of Art’s 2020 winter members’ show, “Full Spectrum.”

One of the first works I was pulled towards was “Waiting for Spring,” a sharp watercolor painting by Kara Bigda. I had to move right up to it to confirm it wasn’t a photograph due to its finelydetailed, well-weathered boards of the barn portrayed in it. The same attention was given to its leafless branches.

Right above it, Wray Clifford’s “First Signs” oil painting of an apple tree’s first buds of the year on a snow-covered hillside benefited from a fine mastery of the artist tools used to make it. It was painted from images Clifford took while visiting friends in Sunday River, Maine. “Most of my paintings are more expansive landscapes, but I loved the way the fresh snow had settled among leaf buds just getting ready to bloom — the ‘First Signs’ of spring,” Clifford said.