Charley Parker blogs about the exhibition Constable: Oil Sketches from the Victoria and Albert Museum on view at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, TN from June 23 – September 30, 2012.

Parker writes: "Constable in his sketches not only sought the truth of nature, but the fleeting effects of light and shadow, the immediate here and now of the visual world. He captured these effects, 'impressions', if you will, in increasingly confident strokes of his brush as his career progressed. He also evidenced a mastery of nuanced color in these quickly realized studies, in which even seemingly plain surfaces and simple areas of greenery reveal multiple subtle hues."