Simply Saratoga Spring 2024 | George Van Hook

George Van Hook considers himself a figurative artist who also paints en plein-air pastoral landscapes. Van Hook’s work is inspired by his observation of natural landscapes during his childhood in Pennsylvania. 

Van Hook has stated that “The 1790 family farmhouse in rural Bucks County, PA, and the bucolic landscape he grew up in ‘touched something in his brain’” (Simply Saratoga Spring 2024, 27).

Bucks County is part of an area slowly being washed away by urbanization, leading the countryside to be replaced by subdivisions and strip malls.  As a result, Van Hook’s en plein-air style memorializes the land’s natural past. 

“Immersed in a disappearing landscape, his eye-catching plein-air paintings feature wood barns of yesteryear, preserving the vanishing dynamic of their everyday subject matter” (Simply Saratoga Spring 2024, 28).

During his life, Van Hook found that the area he lived in had become too remote. This caused him to travel with his wife Sue to California for a time before settling in the “Great Blue Northeast” due to its central location and cultural delights. 

“Washington County is simply so beautiful and it’s in the middle of this wide cultural and aesthetic center. We’re very fortunate. The way the lands fold, the hills, how the roads curve around, the forest, the 19th-century architecture - these are things I love” (Simply Saratoga Spring 2024, 28).

Publisher, Saratoga TODAYFollow this. “Simply Saratoga Spring 2024.” Issuu, 29 Mar. 2024, issuu.com/saratogapublishing/docs/simply_spring_2024_issuu.