Fine Arts: ‘Portraits of Preservation’ in Princeton

Since D&R Greenway Land Trust was founded in 1989, the organization has preserved 308 properties, comprising 20,903 acres of land. Hunterdon County artist and conservationist James Fiorentino has traveled to many of the sites using his expert drawing and painting skills to document them and the wildlife that lives there.

Thirty of his watercolor paintings done on those excursions are currently on view at D&R Greenway’s headquarters in the Johnson Education Center’s restored circa 1900 barn on Preservation Place in Princeton.The Johnson Education Center is the only resource of its kind in New Jersey and it is one of only two in the country. Its large gallery spaces not only serve as lecture halls and meeting rooms, they are always filled with art depicting the natural world and its wildlife inhabitants.

Fiorentino’s paintings are all paired with text wall panels. Wildlife paintings are accompanied by panels offering details about the species and preferred habitat.Paintings of conserved land are accompanied by panels that give information on the acreage, when the land was preserved and its location.His painting of the Sourland Ecosystem Preserve is a winter scene where bare trees are reflected in a narrow winding rock-bordered stream that wends its way through a snow-covered forest floor strewn with rocks and natural detritus. Working with only umbers, russet, blue and white, Fiorentino conveys the cold stillness of the day he was there. The accompanying text panel speaks of D&R Greenway’s preservation of the Preserve’s 3,400 acres and its importance to the declining bird population and the critical role of the Sourland Mountain springs providing clean water to the regions it serves.

Fiorentino’s painting of the Cider Mill Preserve is enticing. It tempts you to step right into it and run through the knee-high Queen Anne’s Lace, on and on to the distant Sourland Mountain ridge. The text panel informs that the 1,600 acre Amwell Valley Grassland Macrosite “is a critical breeding ground for grassland birds…bobolinks, meadow larks, grasshopper sparrows. American kestrels, wintering short-eared owls and northern harriers forage the vast fields.”The kestrel is also reliant on the grasslands of the St. Michaels Farm Preserve in Hopewell, land that had been home to the St. Michael’s Orphanage and Industrial School operated by the Catholic Diocese of Trenton from 1896 to 1973. The building where the children lived and went to school was demolished and today 415 preserved acres provide walking trails and a vernal pond.

Fiorentino’s painting presents the weathervane on the roofline of the new barn where four children, arms linked, dance along the top of the sign on the long arrow. His expert drawing skills are especially evident in this precise painting.