Kiss the Sky

Off Barn Island. Oil on stretched canvas, 10x20. sold

It was near the end of the summer when I had the first go at this painting. I'd gone to Barn Island, at the end of Palmer Neck Road in Stonington, on a mid-week day in August, thinking I'd be alone.

Instead, there were dozens of fishermen there, with their boats and trucks and cars and friends and kids and dogs and trailers, and the whole parking lot reeked of pee, human and canine. Still, the morning had dawned quiet and calm, with a light haze over the water, and so I stood my ground and painted, ignoring everything except what was right in front of me.

I came home with a painting that I half-loved. The sky intrigued me. The clouds looked like they were bursting into day, and they had light and air and the color of dawn. But the water, ouch, it was bad. It looked like concrete, like something that had never moved and never would.

So I kept the painting, and kept staring at it and thinking about it and contemplating. And yesterday, as the rain fell, I reworked the water, taking special care not to touch the sky.

Thanks for reading!