Painting on Marginal Way, Ogunquit, Maine

Mary Byrom is a robust and hardy painter from Maine. She paints every day. And this week she invited a group of us from Boston to paint the surf on her turf, the shoreline of Ogunquit, Maine. This started out as an intention to paint rocks and surf. There could almost not be any lovelier place than this to paint. However, the subject along "the way" that caught my eye was the "leaning tree" on the landscape. Here is a case of a subject picking me.
I made the decision to paint this wonderful element (the tree) into a painting that was about the tree and not necessarily about the landscape before me. This is what an artist can do that a photo shopped photo cannot do, make it look totally believable as a place and time.

These are the decisions I made to make the painting about the tree:
- To use the low lying house to give the tree more stature.
- To drop out the shoreline and most evidence of vast human occupation on the cliff - To isolate and reinforce the tree as a survivor.
- To drop out the back ground shoreline because it added nothing to the tree.
- To paint the sky at the moment that it was at it's most windswept self.
- To emphasize the whips of color that my eye caught (and is no where in the photo)

One could say that I am treating the landscape as a still life, moving objects around from the landscape before me; re- arranging in order to design and emphasize my intention. It's very freeing. And most surprising to me ... everyone who walked by while I was painting, approved of the changes. I did not have one person say "That's not the house the tree is leaning against." Now, that's a successful painting.