Original Watercolor Painting, “Plein Air, Geese at Gasworks, 5.2.23-5.11.23”, watercolor, 30 x 42”, 2023

This is one of my favorite paintings of the last several years, by far.  It builds on multiple bodies of work within my practice, some years in the making.  I’ve always loved sketching animals from life, but up to this point, had barely dipped my toe in the water of doing so with paint instead of graphite.  My iterative studies of seagulls and geese in pencil (graphite) deeply informed this piece, made only with watercolor.  I worked on this over several sessions up to a few hours at a time.  The baby geese which were no more than palm-sized when I began developed so rapidly that even ten days later they were unrecognizable and I had to leave their studies as-is.  As I kneeled on the lawn at Gasworks, occasionally the geese would encircle me, neither of us bothering the other, only a few feet apart.  I could study them up close.  Each painting of a goose here (with a few exceptions) is really a multiple-try worked up painting of many different geese, all posing in more or less the same light and position.  The finish on their rendering reflects how much time I was able to spend observing a goose (or many) doing the same thing from the same viewpoint.  There is something deeply calming about drawing or painting live animals from life, and I emerge from such sessions refreshed and alive myself.

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