These are studies of the salt marshes along the Northeast section of the rail road line that goes up along the Southern coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island. It is the single saving grace of a very long, deadly dull train ride to Boston. I discovered it just after 9/11. The airports were shut down at that time, and I had taken this train to visit my son who was then studying physics at MIT. It has a number of stretches of mud flats and salt marsh that I have since sketched many times.
I first saw the potential of working with flat beds of marshes back in 1980 while spending some time on Cape Cod. I was captivated by the long, warm light in the fall, the dark Payne's grey of the sky, superb with the glow of the cranberry marshes in the evening light.
To me , there is no better time to sketch the tidal basins than late in the day after a soaking rain. If there is a break in the clouds, just as the sun is ready to set, it is as if it was laid out in brilliant warm light just for me. The water can be a clear as glass, a mirror of light against the soft grasses or the dark horizon.
These sketches were done as the light was fading in the early evening, the sun was setting as we sped through the stretch of ochre grasses with small patches of red sumac and cuts of the water. This idea of me trying to sketch and paint some slice of a view while moving 65 mph is sort of not really possible, but sometimes there is something impressed on the page that captures a specific moment of seeing in a particular light, and that is what painting is. Pushing water and pigment around until it begins to say, this is the land, this is the water, this is confusing.
I often work this way when I am travelling as a passenger by bus, car or rail. The flickering frames of landscape, broken by telephone poles or trees, feels very cinematic. There is a shift in my relationship to what is possible, in the way of the glimpse of something, rather than the long period of viewing that is also part of my studio practice. It is a great exercise in letting go.
As I get older, it is easier for me to see the repeating cycles of creative work from the figure to the land, and back to the figure, combining short sketches and long hours. The interplay of my measured perception over prolonged viewing or repeated short periods of viewing is connected to my ideas of how I experience something. Sometimes, I think I see the thing in a flash, in an instant, and sometimes, it emerges over a long period of viewing and whining and just plain hard long hours of painting or modeling the figure.
There is the simple organic relationship of parts, or the gesture? Obviously there is the political charge of the figures, and the complete lack of figures in the landscape...
My mind and studio practice is very fluid. The analytic and intuitive impulses flow so quickly and easily that breaking the process into meta cognitive shifting of the gears, is more or less something I more easily see when I am not really capable of working at a high level of creativity. I sometimes work when I don't feel particularly inspired or energetic. At this slower pace, I can more easily see the rituals, the breaks, the tricks I use to re-engage the space. I have often produced solid work out of the space of discipline, though not necessarily inspired work. I accept the fallow time as a time to reflect and give the rich productive times a long lead. Any one who has worked with me in studio situations, will attest to the charge of unbroken hours of work, sleepless nights and early mornings. If I am engaged in something, it does wake me up in the middle of the night.
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