Island Color: When Palette Trumps Subject

Sometimes, when you’ve not picked up a brush in a couple weeks, the impulse to paint can both die down and build up. A couple of non-studio projects have keep me busy, but I recently made time to get a piece underway that’s been in the drawing stage for several weeks.

This piece, “Island Color” is in its early stages, inspired from an old wrap-around porch on an old house on Plum Island (part of Newburyport, MA). When I saw this building the mid-day light hitting the dormers (and casting the long shadows I love to paint) caught my eye. But the building itself was void of color. A plain, gray (not even nice weathered gray, just bleak gray paint). In starting the piece, I decided it was about color, less the house itself. Though incomplete, the color is giving this place personality and life. In reality, it’s a great old building, but unremarkable at a casual glance.

There’s work to be done correcting perspectives (right dormer perspective is wrong), and the red grass in foreground will be more sap green, but overall the feel of this piece is right. When complete (this week), Island Color will be offered to ArtEssex Gallery a new venue I’m looking forward to working with in Connecticut.