Most artists try to paint things - a boat or boats, a tree or trees, the sky, rocks, fruit, the landscape. These can be accomplished with different degrees of accuracy and to see a well done copy can sometimes leave you in awe intellectually. But seldom will it move you emotionally.
Better artists understand that the object itself is not the real concern. But the light falling on the object is what gives it life. Take the water in a harbor for example. At different times of the day, it can be blue, green, white, silver or black. The water has not changed but the light has.
I try to paint the feeling I get from a particular scene. People come to Maine not just for the good weather and spectacular landscape but to 'Get Away' or 'Get back to nature.' These are feelings or emotions. My goal as an artist is to bring the viewer back to that feeling or emotion. I call them Landscape allusions. This is not always a pretty little emotion with a picket fence around it. Many times, especially in Maine, the feeling is intense and bold, or cold and foreboding. But then there are those gorgeous landscape skies and land and water that almost make you want to cry they are so beautiful. They are all a part of Maine and life and I would like to capture them all in my work.
For me, the still bigger thrill is when a collector understands what I have tried to do and gets the same emotional pull I got when I painted it, and the pull is so strong they have to have it.
In the late ‘80’s, I started painting while vacationing in Boothbay Harbor and Cape Cod. A carpenter by trade, I was always interested in design and aesthetics. Basically self taught, with help from Ann Christensen, Jimmy Green, Alan Keith, and encouragement from Corinne McIntyre, Henry Bonner and others, I paint nearly every day and prefer to paint plein air. For me it’s always been about the possibilities of what lies beyond, or through, or in. This is the larger value. Plein air painting allows me to improve my skills technically.
I am an active member of the Boothbay region art community, The Plein - Air Painters of Maine, and currently own, with my wife Priscilla, the allen david GALLERY in downtown Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
Paintings are 36"x36"
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