Be Greene with Envy

Uncovering Greene County

by Amy Lubinski, September 25, 2008

We all have that neighbor who lives across the street that we politely say hello to every day when we take out the garbage or retrieve the mail, about whom we know very little. Sure, you know they drive a beat up Subaru, and that they just painted their shutters green, but that’s about it. Yet there is more to this neighbor than you thought you knew. You can tell by the smell of French cuisine coming out of their kitchen in the evening, the montage of ski equipment that falls into the drive way every time the automatic garage door opens, the eclectic paintings hung on their walls you spy from your garden. To the surrounding counties in the Hudson Valley, this neighbor is Greene County—a destination that is familiar, yet its charm often overlooked, unnoticed, or just simply unexplored.

Greene County has always had something to offer its visitors, according to Daniela Marino, director of promotions for Greene County Tourism. The county was one of America’s first vacationlands for the wealthy, and a stop for traveling sailors, she said. Come the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the middle class, more people flocked to the area. “The area is renowned for its clean air, outdoors, the paintings by Frederick Church—all publicity that combined to made Greene County a vacation destination,” explains Marino.

Marino admits that there has been a change in perception from a family place “to a more artistic and trendy destination. But we still are a family place,” she said. In fact, Budget Travel recently selected Catskill for its September issue as one the “10 Coolest Towns,” of less than 10,000 people, that “rival larger cities when it comes to good food, culture, and quality of life.” The magazine noted that “after a period of neglect in the 1980s and ‘90s, Catskill is attracting artists again.” This reawakening can be attributed to “a huge synergy” said Marino. “If you start with Catskill, you have grants that helped beautify Main Street. Gallery owners followed with buildings and facades. It started as a depressed area, which made way for businesses to come move in,” Marino elaborated.

But the area has always had a strong tradition of inspiring artists. As a young painter, Thomas Cole, creator of the Hudson River School, made this first trip up the Hudson River to Catskill in 1825, and his paintings of landscapes created a sensation in the New York art world. The Thomas Cole Historic Site, including Cole’s home, Cedar Grove, and his studio, is located in Catskill at the river’s edge. (Cole’s apprentice, Frederick Church, perched his Moorish villa, Olana, on a bluff above the Hudson River in Columbia County with stunning views of Greene County’s Catskill peaks.) “Greene County is the home of the first American landscape,” explains Victoria Alten, Windham Fine Arts gallery director. “Greene County has some really astounding landscape. It has unusual lighting. There’s a really not a bad view from anywhere—every curve in the road has something to paint. Some of our artists come from all over the country to paint here.”

Since its opening in 2001, the Windham Fine Arts Gallery has been featuring work by dozens of artists, with over 400 paintings in the gallery at a time. Though the gallery is often noted for its paintings of landscapes, Alten explains that those paintings fill only half of the collection, not all. “We have a great cross-section of work,” she clarifies. Today, the Windham Fine Arts Gallery houses some of Thomas Cole’s original landscape paintings, as well as abstract paintings from the late Edward Arcenio Chavez and Ethel Magafan. The gallery also contains the work of many current-practicing artists, including Kevin Cook and James Coe.