That state of forgetting, subsuming conscious attention to looking and painting to uninhibited expression, resulted in many of Berlind’s best paintings. Having chosen a subject because some combination of elements caught his eye – a railing and trees seen in reflection through a foreground spray of branches in Skowhegan Bridge – he would make one or more plein-air paintings. Back in the studio, the painting might suggest new interpretations as the subject broadened to include not only his memory of the scene but also the record of its observation in the painting itself. The “on-site” paintings are necessarily small, painted quickly without planning or revision. Those processes got underway in the studio, where Berlind repainted the images, often at a larger scale, sometimes several times. Colors and compositions were adjusted and clarified, sketchy elements re-stated in passages of still-spontaneous, improvisatory paint handling. Made by an oil painter with an eye for subtle color and contrast, October Water, the largest of four versions of the subject, for example, is a masterful example of Berlind’s process of observing, describing and reimagining. The title of the exhibition, “Reality is everything,” is borrowed from Fairfield Porter, who, like Berlind, was both a painter and a perceptive critic attuned to a wide range of historical and contemporary artists, and was one of his family of influences. It bears noting that Berlind’s undergraduate thesis was on the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, who famously answered when asked if he worked from nature, “I am nature.” Both statements speak to what Berlind sought from the ever-flowing current of experience, briefly stilled through the act of painting. Jill Weinberg Adams, September 2017