"Jupiter Boat," 2019-2025

A Boat painting I've been working on for six years

I’ve often said that while some paintings get finished quickly, others may take months or years. It’s not that I’m actively trying to finish something day after day for months or years, but while working on one painting, something may happen with a color or a shape and it reminds me of a solution or change for another painting.

One other possibility is that I take out a painting I haven’t looked at for a while and I see a very clear change that I want to make. It isn’t so much the idea of improving the painting, it’s more the idea that the painting could go further and I can see something new in the painting itself. Plenty of artists are known to revisit a painting and change it - Francis Bacon, Bonnard, Monet, Diebenkorn, David Park. I’m hardly alone in this way of working.

“Jupiter Boat,” 2019-2025, 72x54 inches, oil/canvas.

Yesterday I worked on the broad red lines of the window. I never could have predicted that this would happen to this painting. But I think the red brings you more inside of the boat cabin which is not necessarily what you would expect. I made this painting using a photo from a boat seller website. It’s rare that I use other people’s photos.

Here’s a detail of the steering wheel which you may or may not have noticed.

The detail let’s you see the paint, the surface, the variety of touch that doesn’t come across unless you can see the painting up close. Ideally you would see this painting in person and experience the surface as a record of looking and changing and considering. After all, the painting is about what’s in the painting, the actual paint, more than it is about what something looks like. When you go hear a concert you might pay attention to the musicians or instruments, but the main thing is the music. For me, the main interest with being in front of a painting is seeing the paint. I think a lot of people miss the paint because they think paintings are about what is depicted, what is being shown to you.

Anyway, as I was painting the steering wheel yesterday, going over a gray/white version of the steering wheel, I suddenly recalled the Matisse painting below. And then the Hopper painting below it. I think those paintings were in my subconscious when I stumbled on the photo, that led to this Jupiter Boat painting.

Henri Matisse, “The Windshield,” 1917, Cleveland Museum of Art.

Edward Hopper, “Jo in Wyoming,” 1947. Whitney Museum of American Art.

I think it’s safe to say that Hopper had seen the Matisse painting at some point, whether it was in life, or in a book. How about those door handles on the right of the Hopper painting? Very cool.

When I painted the steering wheel in my painting, I also found myself thinking about the pink steering wheel in this Amy Sherald painting which I saw in person a few months ago at SFMOMA.

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NEWS

“Giant Paintings from New England, California and Newfoundland” will be on view at 425 Market Street in San Francisco, March 17-May, 30, 2025.

Upcoming exhibition “Small Paintings” at Galerie Mercier, Paris, May 20-24, 2025.

Group show at The Glass House Fundraiser in New Canaan in June.

Group show at Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA in July.

September solo exhibition at Truro Center for the Arts, Truro, MA.

Click here to see all of the new notecards including Paris, San Francisco, Amalfi, Newfoundland, Race Point, North Truro, Maine.

Notecards are also available in person at Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Keplers Books in Menlo Park, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, SFMOMA, University Art In Redwood City, Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera and The Cape Cod Museum of Art.