"September" oil on linen 48x48 on view at A|M|Y @525w22 thru Friday 9/12/16 I started the Blue Sky paintings several years ago, after 9/11. I have largely kept them private. September 11, 2001, was one of those crystal clear blue days. I was alone on the island in Maine, out of communication, listening to the events unfold on the radio. It dawned on me, as I continued painting out of doors (with a radio at my side) that even with the horrific events, the world kept spinning, the sun kept shining, the tides kept ebbing and flowing, that what America was experiencing were “human problems,” and that nature didn’t really seem to care. This awareness led me to try to find a way to express the feeling. The blue sky reminds me to try to gain a larger perspective. I lived in Seattle for eight years. There, when the clouds part and the blue sky makes an appearance, it is reason to celebrate. I would always grab a small panel on those occasions and record the blue sky. It was a way to remind myself that it is always there. Ever present. Even when the clouds are between us and it. It became a metaphor. The light traveling eight minutes from the sun, entering our atmosphere, striking the gasses and dust particles, and creating the illusion of the color blue against the vast dark void of space. It is everything: the sun, which sustains us, and nothing, and the infinite darkness of deep space, conjoined. The blue painting might be misread as a color field painting. But it is not. It is a representational painting, a direct realistic painting of the wide-open blue sky. Each of the small Blue Skypaintings are done in one day. I say that this is my “one original idea.” To undertake a realistic painting with no subject, no focal point, and no perspective is challenging. All color is relative, so matching the exact color of the sky when there is no other object in the picture to use to compare relative hue and tone is the ultimate challenge. But it is very rewarding when the atmosphere begins to appear, and the paint transubstantiates and becomes air, light, space. Eliot and I had a favorite song, "Blue Skies Are Coming" by Noah and the Whale. This painting is for Eliot.
