As a landscape painter, I work on location and continue to simplify compositions so they read as large patterns of light and dark. Abstracting the three-dimensional world into simple shapes is as important to me as capturing sunlight on form and realizing the essence of a location.

For purposes both prosaic and poetic, I work in a small format in the field and continue to study nature at different times of day and in different weather patterns– lost edges on a foggy day on Monhegan Island or the craggy coast of the south Kerry hold my interest as keenly as the vibrant blue shadows cast from a white silo on a sunny July day in the Hudson River Valley.

Born of an endless supply of sketchbook studies, the prints in this collection have taken more time and patience than the oils, and represent an almost obsessive investigation of the barns that act as sentinels around my homestead and inner landscape; their silos and haymows hold an important place in each composition and in my own history and heart as well.

I live in the home that my grandparents built, and the barns at Davis Corners have been part of my family’s work life for five generations. Over the years, some of the barns surrounding us have endured while others have fallen under the weight of this past century. That I get to bear witness to what sunlight does to a white barn on a sultry summer day, watch it simmer and then go violet before the moonlight takes over proves that my forebears must have done something very right. This work is dedicated to my family at Davis Corners, 1769-2012, who did more than paint barns so that I could.

Kate McGloughlin
Olivebridge, NY
May 2012

When the barns went up right around 1800, that’s when it really became us. Five generations of the Davis family in Olivebridge have spent a great deal of time working in, and in my case, playing in the hay barn, horse barn, granary, feed and chicken coops, the pony shed and all manner of assorted out buildings that comprised our farm from that time until about the winter 2005 when the big barn finally fell to the ground with a giant sigh. The other buildings went down in their own time and on their own accord under the weight of an Uncle’s disinterest and the cruelty of time.

Not one of the cousins or city friends that came to stay and work with Vi and Lon or Grandma Davis can forgive the loss of the barnyard, the absolute absence of the landscape that held us and kept us busy during day long haying sessions (or more importantly the day long hide and seek games). Swinging from the top hay mow past the feed bin and on to the neatly stacked bales of hay, we were pirates and Tarzan and escaped convicts and cat burglars and heroes. We knew we had it made because we had a barn to play in; at every turn we unearthed cool stuff from another century, always had a place to work on our bikes when it rained, and never had to find a better club-house to meet in.

When my grandfather died he left our home to my brother Michael and said, “I know you’d rather have the barn, but I want you kids to always have a house to live in”. And so I do. And I make a lot of paintings and prints about barns of all kinds to send a wink to my ancestors to let them know that I’m grateful and that I was paying attention. And when I get a million dollars, I’ll rebuild the barnyard at Davis Corners.

Enter Terry Laslo, owner and operator of Wingcat Web Design. She was gentle. She was kind. She was patient. AND, she knows what she’s doing and knows how to handle even the most out of touch-with-all-of-this-computer-business-types, like yours truly. SO, this is my first attempt at posting a (i hate this word) BLOG, which my sister Colleen told me is a nickname for Web Log, and to keep me interested, I’ve told myself it’s a love note to the great Web Woman in my life, Terry Laslo, whom I adore and to whom I will remain grateful. www.wingcatwebdesign.com.

Though I’d been to Ireland a few times before, it was in April of 2009, at the invitation of the Cill Rialaig Project that I returned to Ireland as a painter.

The rugged coast and lush fields of green and early-spring-ochre put me at ease immediately. South Kerry was a place I’d never been but felt completely at home in from the first moment I stepped on to the Cill Rialaig road (“the last road in Ireland”). I spent the better part of a month in a thatched roof cottage by the sea with nothing to do put paint, draw, and fall in love with my neighbors. Then we sang.

I went back the following April to strengthen the friendships I’d established there, to make use of the print shop with those friends, and to continue the work that I’d begun the year before. Mission accomplished.

The skelligs that appear and disappear in that distant place out at sea encouraged me, as did the spring lambs that came as close as they dared before bleeting away toward their mothers. This is another place I know that I will return to…its affect on me is still undetermined but completely palpable.

Kate McGloughlin

April 2011

The weird thing about the Ashokan Reservoir is that some of my people use to live in a town formerly located where it rests today. They had to leave their land and the beautiful farm and gristmill they owned to make room for the reservoir that had to be built to provide drinking water for the other half of my family who came to New York from Ireland with the thirsty multitude who descended here in an enormous wave.

I knew my great grandmother, Bessie Bishop Davis, and I can tell you she never got over the loss. She was 98 when she died, and was still pissed that they “stole her home”. How can a place that holds so much grief be a place that provides so much peace and inspiration to so many people? I think there’s more to it than the ever-changing aesthetic mix of mountain -water –sky. I think the story, itself an elegy, lays a thick layer of beauty born of tragedy on the place. I’m sure that’s the thing that people respond to when they visit the Ashokan Reservoir.b