Just boats

I’m sorry about the lack of a post yesterday; the collywobbles-sans-merci blew through my household this weekend. Sometimes when the limbs are still, the mind does its best work.

Last summer Howard Gallagher of Camden Falls Gallery took Lee Boynton and me out to see the start of the Camden feeder of the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta. It’s the first time I’ve ever filled my entire 16-GB memory card and my cell phone with pictures. (I think Lee took about as many.) That day was one of the highlights of my summer.

I love painting boats, and could spend my whole summer on the dock with them. You can’t paint them under sail en plein air, except as slashes of white against the sky; they move too fast for that. And I don’t generally paint from photos, so I shot pictures of them and contented myself with that. Anyway, my habit for the last decade or so has been to spend the summer painting en plein air and the winter doing figurative work in my studio. Usually that figurative work has an overlay of social commentary to it; I just can’t seem to help myself.

I returned to Rochester in September with a show penciled in for next March and a great concept. Nothing about this has worked out right. The gallery and I haven’t been able to reach terms. I haven’t been able to get the models on board. The model I started with suddenly developed cold feet (perhaps he needs warmer socks). My stretchers were backordered. Yada, yada.

About a dozen times over the past few weeks I’ve muttered to myself, “I’d really rather be painting boats.” And then this weekend, twisting around in the damp embrace of my sheets, I asked myself, “Why aren’t you just painting boats? They make you happy, they make other people happy.” And I realized I have utterly no enthusiasm for this project that has proven so difficult.

So I’ve cancelled my spring show in Rochester, and I’m going to paint boats. Not social commentary, just sailboats.