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"Sheep Meadow Sentito"Sentito is a musical term that means ‘with gentle feeling’ and in my painting I think… |
Central Park is steeped in history. Charles Dickens, when visiting New York in 1842 wrote of the terrible living conditions of the area, where people lived amongst the squalor of farm animals and rats. William Cullen Bryant noted in 1844 that the whole island of Manhattan was being ‘devoured inch by inch’ and it was not until 1857 that a decision was made by landscape architect Frederick Olmstead to clear the site for a park. This took twenty years of dedicated thought and work and the park was finally opened in the centennial year of 1876.
The sheep meadow retains its name as the only true remnant of those times. When my wife and I walked across that piece of land some years ago, I could not help but remember that it was an incredible sensitivity to the human condition that led a human mind to literally ‘save’ that little paradise in the midst of the chaos that was to become New York.Sentito is a musical term that means ‘with gentle feeling’ and in my painting I think that such ‘gentle’ considerations (conscious and unconscious) are all that is necessary for the finest in communication.
