Because we visit Monhegan Island for the same weeks each summer, we often see the same people who are visiting on a matching schedule. We have made friends over this dozen years, friends we see on the Island, and sometimes off the Island. We have watched our friends' children grow up. They have watched our daughter grow up. I love seeing the inside of different cottages that our friends rent. This is the tabletop inside one of those cottages. Books, wildflowers, hurricane lamps, sun streaming across the table, shelves holding dog-eared books, and well-used board games. And, a beautiful painting of the harbor, with Manana as its backdrop.
Thanks for looking. I'm enjoying this exploration of summer from the gray and more gray of this winter.
Back to my sketchbook during this long, gray, snowy winter. I have a lot of source material from Monhegan Island, and am working on a series of images from the dock. Everyday, there are young (and older) people on the dock passing the time in ways that hearken back to another era. They fish, they read, they swim, and toss things, and just hang out.
When I was a child, my parents owned a house on Cape Cod. We spent a month there every summer and commuted every weekend during the school year as well, at least for the first few years before sports took over our free time. On the weekends, I spent hours sitting on the dock at the public beach nearby. I would watch, listen, and absorb the rhythm of the waves below me. These children on the dock remind me of those times. I'm going to build on the series, and use these as studies for some oil paintings.
In the spirit of the Olympics, check out this very short video I shot on the Monhegan dock a couple of summers ago. You'll see what I'm talking about:
Thanks for looking, as always, I love your comments.
