While many of today’s artists rely on photographs as a reference tool, Gary Milek prefers to work from sketches and takes his drawing materials into the field. The plants, flowers, and old apple orchard at Cider Hill Gardens provided a wealth of subject matter for over forty-five years, while the pastures and woods bordering Mount Ascutney and the flowing waters of the nearby Connecticut River offer a continuous source of inspiration. From sketches, he creates watercolors, which sometimes become finished paintings themselves, and these “notes in watercolor,” as he terms them, are the basis for his later egg tempera paintings. Milek’s egg tempera and gold leaf compositions are lyrical expressions demonstrating the artist’s reverence for nature. In his words: “Fourteenth and fifteenth century painting used the techniques of tempera and gold leaf to embellish and sanctify the rooms and surroundings, used contemplatively to possess a mood of heavenly thoughts. Low or little lighting candles reflected on the golden pictures expressing a feeling like breathing – ever changing…Painting is two dimensional, a flat surface. The magic of expressing three dimension allusions has possessed the artist throughout time. Picture planes, vanishing points of perspective and receding colors are the tools I use to create my landscapes.”

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