Winter at Baker Springs

"A Russell Chatham painting speaks of necessity. When we see it we know it had to be. We know that this vision could not have been left to languish without being given form.

There is no intrustion of the artist, no self-declaration.

When I see a Chatham painting I feel my own mind expounded in the natural world.

It works the way a good poem works, not to blind or startle or amaze—or as is frequently the case, to bore—but to make us say, "Ah! Yes. That's right! I had forgotten. Thank you."

- Dan Gerber