2024- Rugged New England

Rugged New England

Woodward fancied himself as a rugged man. He once described himself as, "...no languishing lily - but instead a hirsute, pipe smoking cuss that knows real work and vigor..." He was always described in articles as vigorous and suntanned. If it not for his accident we imagine the artist would have lived a life of travel and adventure, not dissimilar to that of Hemingway. He was at his heart a romantic adventurer.

You look up the definition of rugged and you can convince yourself it is describing New England itself- rocky, uneven, and broken. The scars and rubble left behind by glaciers. Woodward saw a special beauty in the "make-do" attitude of those who can take such wreckage and gathered it up to assembled the stonewalls New England may be best known.

Yet still, it is not just the good fences they make but also the foundations many a structure are built on... The rock ledge that one builds their sugar house, or the hill-mound of earth deposited by the nearby river to create a fertile farming meadow at its foot. The retaining wall that keeps your barn from collapsing to the pasture below; to the jutting hard ledge of a high hill top that permits a lone tree to bury its roots deep into its layer in order to withstand the decades of storms and strong winds it will endure.

The adaptation of a people to their environment makes it nearly impossible to not embody the character it holds. The two merge to become synonymous of each other. Critics and commentators frequently point out Woodward's special familiarity with New England. We believe that it is at this depth that only a man such as himself, with all he has been through and experienced, connects with the region unlike anyone else. There is no one that sees or expresses New England the way Woodward does.