Work in Progress

Waterscapes, particularly ocean scenes, are as difficult as deserts to hold wholly in one's vision. Too much space, too few verticals, to little variety -- or so it seems. The challenge is particularly great when one imagines trying to work off T.H. Benton's ideas of spriraling verticals that set apart collaged, semi-respresentative vignettes. So my work in progress is to paint waterscapes, while mulling over the problem of ambiguous, fractured, and unoriented space.

All the paintings below were done plein air. The Nye Beach (Newport Oregon) paintings were done in January and March of  2011, the San Juan Island (Washington state) pieces in May, 2011, and the Oregon state park scenes were painted in July, 2011.

The panorama from American Camp on San Juan Island is the most obvious one in which the "unoriented space" challenge was approached. The shore, of course, gives an orientation, but one can easily fall into the Strait of Juan de Fuca beyond, sensing its seething featureless depths. That sense of being out of time, in boundless space, is one of the effects I am working toward. It is echoed in the fog behind the two prominent trees in the Seal Rock piece.

American Camp, San Juan Island, panel 1 of 3, 12 x 16", oil on masonite, 2011