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Dan Fionte's painting of Middle Street, in Newburyport Massachusetts.
Middle Streeet, Newburyport
oil on linen
74"x24"
2020

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Numbers 33 - 43, Middle St, Newburyport, Massachusetts. Shadows of free-standing greek revival homes cast on federalist brick across the street. Midwinter New England light offers a spectacular sense of dimensionality. The warmth of the colors defies the bitter cold February wind. The isolation of the scene, an omen for the year to come.

I was in Newburyport on an errand last February when this scene struck me. I was able to stop and take photographs of the scene uninterrupted, as it was during the middle of the day, in the off-season, when the only people who would be out on the streets would be doing so out of absolute necessity. It was quite cold as New England winters tend to be, but nearly snowless. One month after deciding to make this painting, for me a very large scale painting, a bit of a challenge to myself, we entered the first lockdown as the Covid-19 Pandemic exploded across the Northeast. Six months later I am calling the painting finished and we still have quite a ways to go, but I am faithful that, like everything terrible that "this, too, shall pass."

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