Original Watercolor Painting, “Plein Air, Dock at Kenmore’s Log Boom Park, ~3:30-4:30pm, 3.29.23, Weds,” watercolor, 30 x 42”, 2023

This painting was made during my ongoing assignment to make work depicting the Lakeside School Rowing Team for the Lakeside alumni magazine.  I was about to journey to the end of the dock in this work, when I noticed how amazing the effect of the light was on the receding perspective of the dock itself.  I usually follow my intuition about “what to paint” in any given painting location - I know it when I see it - and this view spoke to me.  I posted up right where I was, having just stepped onto the long dock.  Almost at the same time as I began, or maybe even slightly before, a man stopped to talk to me about the work I was doing.  We hit it off, and ended up spending the entire time I painted (just over an hour) in conversation, about his work (a photographer), about mine, about how great it is to get outside, and other things.  It was really enjoyable for me to be able to share, in real-time, how I make what I do, with someone who was interested, curious, invested.  When I began this work I left space for the white of the paper to represent the glare of the sun on the water.  As I worked, one of the last elements to paint was the shadow of the railing on the dock.  I painted it at a fairly flat angle… then realized, oh no, that angle makes no sense for where the sun is in the rest of my painting!  The sun had moved significantly West (to the right) since I’d begun.  So, damn the consequences, I thought, I’ll wet the paper and try to lift out those incorrectly placed (but correctly observed!) Shadows.  You can see their “ghosts” in the foreground of the dock.  I made up placements for them based on what they might have been previously, with the sun more directly overhead and centered.  At the end of the day, the mottled texture the ghosts leave doesn’t bother me, and the story is amusing to me.