Oil on linen, 32 × 38 in.
Greg Horwitch divides his time between New York City and mid-coast Maine, and this painting belongs entirely to the coast. Low tide at dusk, a weathered dock and its pilings reflected in still water, the dark treeline going quiet behind, a handful of boats on their moorings. Horwitch trained at the Rhode Island School of Design before spending twelve years in Italy studying at Charles H. Cecil Studios in Florence, and the Old World education shows in every inch of this canvas — the light here is chiaroscuro light, the Italian painter's light, the kind that makes darkness feel like possibility rather than absence. "The Italian word chiaroscuro literally means light-dark," he explains. "Light renders the world visible to the eye; darkness renders it captive to the imagination." The Close of Day is a Maine painting seen through a Florentine eye, and the combination is quietly extraordinary. Framed and ready to hang.