Boats and Other Vessels

Boats are an easy kind of subject for painting and drawing. They're not necessarily easy to delineate, but they hold endless potential in their form and their metaphorical presence as vessels for passage, vessels for containing, vessels for drifting, etc... The simple dory, moored on the mud flats, acts unconsciously as a barometer of tides, wind direction, light, shadow, reflection. Like Eliot's river "a strong brown god", the mudflat is a place that reminds us of the untamed reality of the earth and water beneath and around our feet. A dory in enough shallow water to cast a reflection but still hold the bottom provides the opportunity for painting of three subjects: the boat, it's shadow and it's reflection. I never grow tired of observing and rendering this. 

“Other machines” have a similar kind of allure for me. Tractors, cars, trucks, tools, etc… Le Corbusier, the French / Swiss architect and painter referred to dwellings as “machines for living”. I think many of my more abstract, free and intuitive sketches have their genesis in this idea. That the lines, planes, solids and voids of the spaces we inhabit form a kind of mechanism that shapes us and helps create a version of us that is full of intention… consciously or not.