Notes on the Boat Yard Series

What do you want to tell someone about your work?  
I want them to see the joy I feel in creating it, the wonderment I find in the simple geometry of the hulls, wires, machinery and how they all work together.

What would help that person understand or appreciate your work more?
That I come from a math phobic place, yet can find beauty in man’s and Nature’s geometry.
That even though it appears tight and restrained, it feels loose and free to me.
That even though it appears cluttered, I feel I can move around in it freely.
That it is like life, a puzzle.

What interests you?
Fresh air, blue skies, water, shorebirds, the sound of the ocean, sand under my feet, the twinkling of light reflecting off water, the sounds of boats’ rigging as it blows against the masts.

What are you trying to do?
Capture the feeling of everything above on a two dimensional plane to share with anyone who is interested.

What are you actually doing?
Painting multiple views of boats, machinery and dock materials.

What effect does one painting have on another, on you?
I take what I have learned from the last painting and apply it to the next. I don’t intentionally make the next painting so that it fits with the last or the series.

Why do you work in oil?
I like the time it gives me to work out the colors I want and I dislike the flat, mat-look of acrylic.

Why are there small paintings?
Some of the smaller details in the larger pieces were small paintings themselves. It was interesting to break them down into smaller and smaller pieces (not sure that I have gone as small as I will go – not in painting size, but in bringing the shapes down to smaller pieces)

How did they come about?
In scrutinizing the larger paintings I sometimes isolate an area and noticed that often there was a good composition there that I wanted to explore in more detail.

Do they all go together, as a suite?
They can. Originally I saw them as a collage of shapes, but now I am not sure.

Why do you paint on the edges of some of the paintings (which can't be seen in the slides)?
Because I find the shapes and colors interesting from all angles. When you look at the small series from the sides as they are all hung on the wall together, it makes an interesting study.

What artists influence you?
Stuart Davis, Kandinsky, Matisse, Motherwell.

What is it about their work that particularly interests you and that you are trying to deal with?
With Davis and Kandinsky it is the shapes and colors and how they put them together, with Matisse it is his economy of line, with Motherwell it is the emotional content.

What is the importance of music to your work?
It keeps me focused on the changes that work whether in music or color and shapes.

Why bright colors?
They make me happy and I feel they represent the way I feel about the subject.

Are you limiting your palette?
I try to, but am not always successful. Why? Because the reaction of colors on each other and the overall composition get out of control quickly and it is difficult to bring it all back together when there are many colors.

What do bright colors have to do with boat yards?
When boats are fresh and new they are typically bright colors, the signal flags, signage and lights often need to be seen in foggy or bad weather so they are usually brighter than most anything else you might see on the water.