 | |
|---|---|
 |
[2001] Since last summer...
Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Maine, is having an exhibit this summer (till September 2) of moderately old Monhegan paintings. That is, those done in the 1940s-1960s. John Day, who owns the collection and curated the show, came up with an inspired title: "Monhegan. The Abstracted Island." In the show is a painting of mine, done circa 1964, that has an odd history.
I had discovered that the tower of the Island Inn had a creaky ladder to it that few if any others knew about. I would climb the ladder on rainy days and paint in comfort. Here I did a watercolor of the main road and the village.
Recently I had a letter from Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps founder, who was a classmate of mine at Yale. I had written him that I had heard he had met Mark Rothko. He had had a chance to buy one of Rothko's paintings, visiting his studio several times. In the end, Shriver said, he did not buy a Rothko. He did not have the money at that time. Too bad. A Rothko painting would have cost close to fifteen thousand then. Now it would bring nearly a million and a half.
On a much more modest level, the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine, has taken two of my Monhegan watercolors. I hope they will be shown soon, along with all those Wyeths.
A good friend has gone through the herculean job of classifying the slides of my paintings. My friend reports that some 400 of my watercolor paintings have been photographed over the years. And perhaps the slides of oils on canvas and acrylics number close to 100. Fat as these figures are, they don't match my complete output. I only get slides for particular purposes, such as shows. I can only guess at my work's total number.
But there is an old saw that says one must produce a mile of watercolor paintings before one achieves a single satisfactory painting. I wonder what my mileage is.
[Summer 2003]
[Summer 2001]
[Summer 2000]
[Summer 1999] |
