Patrons buy up Jay Brooks’ landscapes

By CHARLIE BUTERBAUGH

CALLICOON, NY — Acute attention to light, and the felicitous or melancholy moods set in a landscape through light’s affect on color, are trademarks of Jay Brooks’ collection of paintings now on display at Jerico Fine Arts Gallery, 27 Lower Main Street.

Brooks, an art teacher at Monticello High School, has already sold 16 paintings in the exhibit, which opened April 29 to a packed house at Jerry Horn’s gallery.

As people viewed oil and pastel paintings with names like “Damascus Sky,” “Beechwoods Mist” and “Delaware Sand Banks,” they were enticed by the photographic quality of Brooks’ landscape expressions. Those who looked further noticed the artist’s presence in each painting; for example, his brushstrokes lead the viewer over the driftwood and the water’s surface, onto the opposite stream bank and deep into the woods in “Callicoon Creek Summer” (oil on birch panel), pictured below.

“I started collecting him five years ago,” Horn said of Brooks. “I think he’s the best and he deserves to be seen.”

The show will remain on display through May 20.

For more information call 845/887-5990.