9" x 12"
"The work is the man." Edward Hopper
In a pretty busy small commercial fishing harbor, across the road from the water and warehouses and piers, sat this old beauty in a field of sand and overgrown weeds. Edward Hopper said that "the work is the man"- I was never quite certain about his meaning until I had it pointed out to me by a bad morning.
We had gone to paint at the fishing harbor a week or so ago. All morning it is overcast and threatening rain but we're there to paint, so I start a painting. This morning's painting is of a couple of fishing boats along side a dock, piles of stuff on the dock, buildings going off into the middle distance - all blue and slate and subdued greens with a soft gray sky. It would not come together - just kicked my rear all morning, the magic just never came. Now, almost every painting goes through a period when it seems lost but this one remained lost. After 3 hours of gray I realized why it didn't work - I wasn't in love with it - I never had a trigger to see me through the process. Well, I was discouraged and tired and about as gray as the morning. I'm hauling my gear back to the truck and while standing in the bed of the truck I turn and across the road is this old trailer in a field of sand and overgrown weeds. I scrape off my palette and squirt out some paint and dive in. - and I am saved! In an hour and a half I slash and flail and forget my discouragement and disaster from the morning - I have a reason to make things happen. Once again I have to teach myself why I paint - the intensity of a visual incident. A reflective surface, the juxtaposition of shadow and light, a pattern of shapes and color that describe space and form - these are the elements of physics and time, of visual life itself, that can make the insane process of making paintings come alive. Thats what it takes for me - thats how the work describes and defines me.
