Matt Thompson Hoisting Lobster Traps Monhegan Island

This painting I painted a few years ago and desired to paint it once again adding some features that were not in the original watercolor. I painted the image 10 years ago and it won a Best In Show Award. This time I added the partial figure to the left who was one of Matt Thompson's crew that season. I included the gulls by working my composition of them from sketches I made on my Monhegan Island Artist Residency in 1999. I sat at Fish Beach and fed the gulls three boxes of crackers while I openly sketched them, accumulating 15 pages of quick gestural sketches in charcoal. In this painting I wanted to have a background, a middle ground and a foreground with something interesting happening in all three. In the Background, it's the pattern of the sky, water and Smutty Nose from the dock on Monhegan Island. Then I wanted the descending Gulls to act as a screen of moving "V-shaped" patterns that break up the background. These gulls were painted simply in a graded valued fashion from light to dark to suggest movement. The most detail went into the foreground where the figures were located. I wanted the main figure to be carefully described with the full action of Matt Hoisting the trap. His body leaned forward with a beautiful light cascading down the waders. I also love the color combination and interaction of greens and oranges that permeate the painting. The whole painting is intended to have a slight warm green tint to the atmosphere to contrast the brilliance of the orange folds of the waders. I love how the light falls on the subject featured in a painting. I wanted the viewer to feel the surprise of this captured moment when the seascape and figures become more than themselves toward a higher moment and harmony of beauty.

This painting is a watercolor painted on 140 lb Gemini Cold Press watercolor paper using the highest quality watercolor pigment. It is matted using only 100% cotton rag mattboard and foamcore backing, picture framing glass and framed in a solid Cherry wood frame hand finished by myself in Tung Oil.