Half-finished

A gallery in Michigan expressed interest in my work and suggested I prepare a group of paintings for this summer. "Anything having to do with boats and the water," the dealer told me. He had been attracted by the seashell paintings I've done, of which there are many. But I thought about what he said and thought I ought to do more boating landscapes and seascapes.

Somewhat surprisingly I've had difficulty building up a backlog of these kinds of paintings. I had three and was working on this fourth but a friend of my wife bought two of them before Christmas.

This one is 12 by 9 inches and entirely made-up, except for the perspective of the rowboat itself which I took from a photo of Huntington harbor. The setting and background are off the top of my head.

This is a Belgian linen that is primed with clear acrylic so you see the color and texture of the linen as you work the painting. I have no idea whether this has any archival soundness but it makes for a great tone under the painting.

Things I want to do with this painting as I try to finish it: I want to manipulate the color of the rowboat away from the monochromatic sand color that dominates at the moment. I'm thinking an opaque pale bluish gray overpainting with some of this sand color peeking through in places. The weeds in the foreground need to be more specifically delineated but I'll leave them for last.