You can’t always be where you want to be. This Labor Day was spent mostly in Boston, moving my son back to college, and not where we ALL would have rather been…on the beach, on the Cape.
So, next best thing was to finish a piece begun on the very place we’d rather be…
“Last Day of Summer” 24 x 24.
I came across this scene recently, in Brewster, MA, just around mid afternoon. The huge old maples cast dramatic shadows on the barn’s facade and side, but brightly illuminated the roofs.
This piece, “Upland Blue” earned its title for the slight bluish tint visible on this old weathered barnboard on the grayish day I came across this place. With that hint of blue in mind, and the goal of amplifying that color in the finished piece, “Upland Blue” is neither literal, nor entirely imaginary, in it’s palette or composition. As with many pieces, it’s somewhere in between.
Driving East on Route 28, near the Harwich/Chatham line, I caught a glimpse of this old barn, tucked back down a long drive, and part of an old Cape Cod farm. Did a U-turn and drove down to capture a reference shot. Light and shadows on the Cape are a bit more dramatic, thanks, in part, to the constant Cape winds that keep trees from growing to their normal height. “Late Day” 40 x 30.
With Summer here, morning walks along the Cape Cod shore of Nantucket Sound provide no shortage of abstract contrasts of light and shadow, horizontal and vertical lines. While this piece was completed on a chilly, rainy day, it brings me back to that warm, sunny summer morning.
Just completed commission of local New Hampshire scene, for Boston area buyer…”Timberline” 34 x 34 oil on canvas.
There’s a brief period during the spring, when the pinkish maple buds and other sprouting things appear–under a late afternoon sun–almost fall-ish. When we think of Spring, we think green…which it mostly is. But even in the newest leaves of many trees and grasses start their lives as a soft blend of oranges, yellows and (yes), green. This recently completed piece, “May Fire” 48 x 48, attempts to capture the colors beyond the greens that truly make up the Spring palette.
A recent early morning walk along the shore in West Dennis, on Cape Cod, inspired this piece, “Morning Sun,” as I ascended the beach up a small dune path. These coastal properties have withstood decades of hurricanes, nor’easters, and high storm tides, each time reshaping the landscape between them and the sea, but always returning it to this same state of simple beauty.
The Cape Cod landscape is, at first glance, a mix of soft and hard lines, created by the omnipresent horizontal where sea meets sky. It’s palette of the soft green of sea grass, light ochre of sand, and the dark bluish green of cedars and scrub oak. But when the sun is low–just after sunrise or just before sunset–the landscape shows its wilder side, where clouds stand out more in the darkening sky, and the unseen colors of weeds, seagrass and trees can be seen, if you look closely enough. “Wild Cape” 48 x 48, oil on canvas.
There’s nothing more beautiful than sunrise on the ocean, with the dramatic low-angle light and shadows of the rising sun. This scene, based on a strip of beach in Dennisport, MA, is greatly simplified from the actual landscape, but the dune fence extending from the cottage down towards the high tide line, captured the morning light in a way that is deceptively simple to portray.
