Truth be told, I am not a patient person. While not in Eric Cantor’s league—recall he’s the dude who wrote in his high school yearbook “I want what I want when I want it”—I can endure until the “right thing” happens. Subscribing to the theory that Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is pessimistic; that two or at most three degrees is often the case, that “right thing” does predictably occur. I hope it does for you, too.
At least five or six years ago, this small painting (about 8 by 12 inches) entered the Agincourt matrix. The source was someone in Ottawa, Ontario, and the price was about ten bucks, as I recall. The painter was E. Scott and likely to remain unknown. But the bridge depicted worked as one of the half dozen that linked Agincourt with its western and southern hinterlands. I had always imagined it at the southeast corner of the original townsite, linking that quadrant with the road to Nimby—not that you’d ever want to go there. When the Community Collection of art materialized as something to occupy the Tennant Memorial Gallery, this was one of its first acquisitions and a back story was required. I’ve never got around to it until now.
Bridges have a mystic quality: we build them, we burn them. Crossing them can be contentious (ask Friar Tuck). Sometimes they lead nowhere (ask Sarah Palin). So who E. Scott was and why s/he would have painted Gnostic Bridge in the dead of winter is a mystery; it does have that plein air quality, doesn’t it? My waiting game paid off recently with the acquisition of this real photo postcard view of a remarkably similar bridge, also shown in the grip of winter, and a confirmation of E. Scott’s vision. I feel a story coming on.
