I Haven't the Foggiest

Reservoir Fog
Oil on canvas, 6x12

Call me at 860-442-0246 or email me

if you are interested in buying this painting

Every morning for a while now, I've gotten up early, taken the dogs out and looked for fog in the back field. Every day, it's been there, and so I've packed up and hit the road, determined to learn to paint fog.

Today, I stopped at the Groton Reservoir, a mile or so from our house. The morning was silent and windless. A skim of pollen spread on the water along the far shore. Otherwise, nothing disturbed the surface.

Fog lay thick along the trees. It seemed to outline their tops, and then, farther away, to gather near the ground.

Fog really is a cloud at ground level. This kind of humid-day summer fog comes when the land cools at night. Condensation is produced by the difference in temperature between the air and the cooler ground, and this condensation is what makes the fog.

All of this makes me think of my father, who, when we were kids and would ask him something, would often say, "I haven't the foggiest."

As I was standing there painting and thinking, I heard a couple heading toward the little parking lot. They'd been out walking, and they were talking, the sound carrying clearly in the still air.

Well, the wife was talking, and loudly, and with a Brooklyn accent, about the military-industrial complex. It's been a long time since I've heard that phrase.

Here is a really cool photograph I found while I was researching fog.

More Fog

Two Boats
Oil on stretched canvas, 11x14

Call me at 860-442-0246 or email me

if you are interested in buying this painting

At 7 this morning, the day was oppressive. I stood on Pequot Avenue, watched waves swell and ebb on the silvery river, and I sweated.

And all of New London, it seemed, ran by me.

Is there another town on the face of the earth where early morning exercise is so commonplace? For every three cars that passed me, two exercisers passed. Runners, walkers, bikers, even a Rollerblader passed me. People walked dogs, walked with friends, rode with spouses. Many stopped to talk.

Oddly, it seemed, all these exercisers passed me once, but didn't double back. I guess one thing about New London is that there are many good, circular routes. Cuts down on the boredom, I guess.

Fogged In

Sunday Morning, 7 a.m. 
Oil on canvas, 6x12
sold

I spent a lovely evening on Saturday in the outdoor garden cafe of the Hygienic, on Bank Street in New London.

A group called Drunken Boat, which includes my brother, Rand Cooper, was reading/performing, and so I went. The show had its ups and downs, but Rand's reading - an article about my parents and their love of New London restaurants - delighted me.

But I went with trepidation, suspecting (correctly, it turned out) that I'd see people I knew from when I was in high school.

It's taken me a while to begin to understand these fears. Partly - and oh, so superficially - I'm old and fat and gray-haired, and embarrassed by all of that. In my imagination, my peers are as slender and strong and vital as they were when we were 17.

On a deeper level, I've come to understand that I don't really like the person that I was in high school. In fact, when I was in high school, I didn't really like the person that I was. So now, I really don't want to be reminded of that person. I don't want to be thought of as that person, by people who only knew me as that person, and I really don't want to somehow be sucked into being that person again - as I might be, interacting with people who only knew me as that person.

A friend brought up an interesting idea. She said that the only way we can be sure that these old friends don't think of us as we were is to dive in, do the scary and off-putting thing, make the new connections and show them the people we are now.

And, as it almost always turns out, seeing my old friends and acquaintances last night was really, truly fun. I had a great time, and enjoyed walking on shared ground.

So this morning, painting in New London, on streets I haunted as a teenager, I felt a sort of peace, a reconciliation with my past, an appreciation for who I was then and who I am now, a lifting of the morning's fog.

In the Thick of It

Two paintings of fog. Top, "Mist," oil on canvas, 9x12, sold. Bottom, "6:15 This Morning," oil on canvas, 8x10, sold

The mornings I've been here, I've awakened to a white world outside the screens of the lake house.

A deep fog has fallen over the mountain across the lake both mornings, blurring the outlines of the trees, and erasing the presence of the mountain behind them.

It's hard to paint fog - or at least, it's hard for me. I'm sure there's some shortcut to painting fog. All I know is that I've been experimenting, finding some stuff that works and some that doesn't. The painting at the top is the one I like better. I made the painting first - and it was a good painting of a deep, shadowed, piney forest. Then I scraped the paint off, and went back over the ghost image with some bluish-white paint.

It's incredibly liberating to scrape off what you've just painted - and know that that's part of the process.

So painters, is there a known way to paint fog in plein air? I'd love to know!