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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Dirt Streets

"Looking Up Ferry Street"
5x7 pastel sketch - SOLD

It's unusual to find a dirt road within a New England town center these days. Most towns think it's cheaper to pave a street than to grade it each year after mud season. But for a painter, there's more value in a dirt one. A dirt one may have wildflowers and grass sprouting up around it, and its edges melt pleasingly into the landscape. You see these roads depicted all the time in hundred-year-old landscapes, but not so much anymore. Instead you see hard-edged streets that take more work to integrate into the landscape.

Yesterday, while the workshop was out painting boats at the Lubec waterfront, I turned my easel 180 degrees and discovered this unexpected scene. It was a moment of visual delight.