Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art | 9/4-9/30 | Santa Fe, NM

Echoes of Freedom

Bruce Cascia brings the vastness of the prairie and the plains to Santa Fe in a show at Giacobbe-Fritz Fine Art

Like many artists who have had careers in art direction and advertising—painting in their free time—Bruce Cascia now paints full time, free of the demands of clients. The series of paintings he calls his “prairie-scapes” embody a sense of freedom as well as one of resilience.

As a boy with a simple camera—a box to hold the film, a lens and a shutter—he photographed the landscapes and buildings of rural Illinois where he grew up. Outside the cities, weather is more visible, as billowing clouds and storms race across the landscape. On frequent trips to the West and Southwest, he had more opportunities to observe changes in the weather and dramatic cloudscapes.

Big Storm Blowing In, oil on canvas, 30 x 40"

He still uses a camera for reference (although a more sophisticated one) and occasionally does on-site watercolors. “They lend themselves to quick composition studies, because you have to finish before the light changes,” he explains.

In addition to his vast landscapes, he also zeroes in on vintage neon signs. He paints the signs during the golden hour, at dusk. “It’s when neon signage comes alive and competes with nature for color intensity,” he observes.

Thunder Mesa, oil on canvas, 40 x 30"

The light of the golden hour doesn’t just provide a backdrop for neon signs. It signals the end of the day often in a most dramatic way. Sunset Windmill, with its low horizon, signals the end of a day and echoes the coastal adage “red sky at night, sailor’s delight.”

Thunder Mesa, on the other hand, depicts afternoon thunderheads billowing up and brilliantly sunlit, promising life-giving rain for crops.

In both paintings, lone farmhouses—built at one time to protect their inhabitants and to withstand the weather—sit as insignificant matchboxes on the landscape. Many are abandoned and “weathered,” paint peeling from sun, wind and rain, and wood slowly rotting back into the landscape.

Sunset Windmill, oil on canvas 30 x 40"

The prairie is often overlooked or driven through without curiosity. Walt Whitman, the great poet of America, its landscape and its people, wrote, “As to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling), while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America’s characteristic landscape.”