Power Plant I

Arthur Dove

1938

Oil on canvas

Seattle Art Museum

"There is no such thing as abstraction, it is extraction . . ." (Arthur Dove, 1929) Forced by economic circumstances to manage family properties in rural upstate New York, Dove found subjects in the local landscape that grounded his abstractions in place as never before. This being the region of his childhood, it was understandably full of personal associations for him. The power plant at the edge of Seneca Lake was just one of the sites that captured the painter's highly analytical eye. A constant on his horizon, the power plant became for the artist a shape defined by ever-shifting light. Partial and promised gift of Mr. and Mrs.