Let’s face it: when I visit a museum showing contemporary art these days I might be challenged, made to think, dumb-founded, or roll my eyes – but uplifted I ain’t.

So it is all the more noteworthy when I stumble into an exhibit that elicits unadulterated joy. And this I did last week when visiting the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM.) Located in a building that is itself a calming environment full of light, and architecturally clever in providing small spaces without seeming small, I saw Color Beyond Description – the Watercolors of Charles Hawthorne, Hans Hofman and Paul Resika.

The title might contain the word color but really the impression was one of all light. And lightness. The watercolors floated on more than the paper, they emanated a joy about connection to the landscape they depicted – or so it seemed to this mind, itself primed by the beauty of the Cape Cod surrounds.

Hawthorne and Hofman both were part of the early Provincetown Art Colony, with Hofman teaching at his own school from 1935 to 1958 when he summered at the Cape. Landscape and nature-inspired abstraction were a main focus for him (and later his student Resika, a painter of the New York School. Here is an enlightening review of the latter’s contemporary work.)

Use of light, and even more so of abstraction, changes how we are able or encouraged to perceive the familiar in new fashion. Keyword here, though, is familiar: I think work that is descriptive of or alluding to something we know resonates in special ways. Instead of working on deciphering we can give ourselves to the joy of recognition, placing a bit of ourselves into the percept, forging a relation.

And play with light is particularly possible for those who KNOW the landscape, intimately and across time and season. I have been thinking about the concept of “the local” recently, spurned both by travel and by input from other domains: A recent reading at OJMCHE by Judith Arcana from her biography of Grace Paley revealed the latter to be determined to cling to the local: as a community organizer, an anti-war activist, and, eventually, a story teller. That decision made her effective in these various compartments of her life, even though it meant national recognition as an artist was late in coming.

The focus on the local cannot be defined too narrowly – both Hofman and Resika were living in multiple locales, and Hofmann’s European background surely influenced his explorations. It is more that familiarity with a given subject leads to expertise in this subject and thus fluidity in describing it, reflecting the changes it can undergo. Well, I am speculating. For an in-depth, knowledgeable and incisive review, you best go here. Clement Greenberg rules!

I am back in the landscape familiar to me, noticing the changes brought on by the season. I am working through the tension how I can always get so excited about all the new I experience, hear and see during my travels, and be equally thrilled when I encounter the familiar, be it of landscapes I frequently visit, or my very own at home. I guess, in the end, a sense of belonging trumps all. But excitement is next best!

And here is a special shout-out to the curator of PAAM who worked a miracle in creating a clever and actually coherent display of completely disparate art slated to be auctioned off for fundraising in early October. The museum deserves support.

Music today by Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question. About covers me and reviewing art…..