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 a watercolor 20 inches by 26 inches by Michael E. Vermette

This is the third time I painted this image. It depicts Matt Thompson, a powerful speaker in the lobster business in Maine and a highly respected lobsterman on Monhegan Island as well. Matt is depicted here hoisting up lobster traps from his unseen boat below. In the first composition of this painting I left out the sea gulls and Matt's crewman all together. In the second painting I added sea gulls but wasn't completely happy with their arrangement. So in this painting I am experimenting with both, putting in the sea gulls in a new composition in the middle ground that seems to work better for me and a small part of Matt's crewman.

I painted the gulls against this sage and turquoise background made up of the sky and water. I tried to counter-change the gulls against the background by painting the background from light to dark and the gulls from dark to light. I also experimented with understating them to place more emphasis on the bent forward lobsterman hoisting the trap and the center of interest in the lower right quarter of the page. The center of interest includes the wood dock, water, lobsterman, trap and a foreground gull. Everything out from that area is less detailed and more subdued.

I love the posture of this figure as he is slightly bent forward as if he just pulled down the rope to hoist the 50-pound trap. For the gulls I did a 10 drawing study on Monhegan Island of gulls in flight during my artist residency on Monhegan Island in 1999. By feeding them three boxes of crackers I was able to draw them at Fish Beach in my 19 inch by 24 inch sketch pad. I arranged the best  of them. placed them as if there were no people around to scare them other than the workers who I imagined interacting with them in just this way.

I think it is much more powerful to include a close-up framed figure in action and not a crowd of people who look like they don't belong there. I always have always been attracted to the working class figures and how they interact with the background. I enjoy layering an experience. Even my background here is designed as a screen of active gulls in the middle ground, against the ocean and sky and smutty nose in the distant  background. There is a large range of greens and green tints all throughout the painting with the intention to pop the lobsterman and his orange waders. The viewer feels comfortable to approach the lobsterman because they are not confrontational.

I tried to find that moment when the landscape, the gulls and the figures become a higher sense of truth, a higher sense of reality in perfect harmonious movement to each other. There is a lot of movement in this painting and a lot I like about this piece.