CAPE ANN

Behind School Street – Mason Court
1984, oil on canvas; 72″ x 72″,
destroyed in studio fire 1997

After graduate school and eight years of living and working and exhibiting in Boston, we moved back to Gloucester––to the north shore where the light and air are conditioned by the north Atlantic. I tried to capture some of that light in this series of paintings, and I was seeking a means of re-connecting with the place and my roots in plein-air painting. Many great painters have recorded their vision of this place: Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Reed Kay––and many other painters have drawn inspiration and energy from the raw beauty of the cape: Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Stuart Davis, and Marsden Hartley to name but a handful. I too have found Cape Ann to be an enduring source of inspiration and energy for my work––as the more recent series “Presence/Absence” reveals.