MacMillan Wharf (V)
MacMillan Wharf (VII)
On our annual August trip to Mt. Desert in Maine this year I opted to pack my oils but had no clear idea of what I was going to do or paint. We stay with some artists in a very basic cabin on one of the lakes there and thought I might find some inspiration. Honestly, I didn’t. However, one morning while I was having coffee I picked up my iPad and looked though some of the photos I had taken. I did a couple of scrolls and noticed a picture of MacMillan Wharf in P’town I’d taken in 2012. I don’t store a lot of pics on that tablet and rarely look at the photos but I stopped on it. It was a wide shot from the beach and I became intrigued by it the more I zoomed in since it lost its recognition. I suppose the semi-abstractness of the cropping is what led me to start the series. Provincetown is awash with competent landscape studies. I wanted to capture the feeling without it being completely realistic or abstract. That idea became MacMillan Wharf (I). It seems a interesting direction from when I first starting painting scenes of Provincetown a few years ago. It feels like stepping on the first rung of a very tall ladder.