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Poot Peak
oil on canvas
30" x 30" 2012 collection of Morgan McBride I started this painting in the fall of 2011, when wildgrass stains the wetlands around Beluga lake with yellow ocher. I blocked in Homer's iconic peak, Chinapoot, and then watched winter gradually obscure it with white. The peak lost dimensionality and looked more illusory than real. As the snow melted away in summer almost a year later, the mountain's texture emerged. I played with loose marks, drawing and wiping out the snows again and again until one day it made sense. (I used to think that I was crazy doing that, until I learned that John Singer Sargent once painted and wiped out a pant leg's shadow twenty times before settling on a believe mark.) By that time, the lake looked wintry again, and most of the ocher grass ceded its space to snow. Some paintings take a long time. |