Summer of L Painting

Summer of L © 2015 Media: oil & mastic on canvas When I was a teenager, by chance, I ended up in a house that had three huge, powerful Sorolla paintings, one of which was the view down into the deep reflection of a boat in water. I became a painter that day. This painting depicts the view of the reflection of a boat onto slightly rippling water. The dark blue hull of the boat stretches across the top of the composition, with stripes of white and pale aqua blue at the waterline, as a fat knotted rope dangles into the water. Below this, the reflection of the hull shifts towards umber/ocher/green, with the boat's white cabin reflected in braod ripples below this in a bright blue sky that fills the bottom of the painting. Layered within this whole image, reminiscent of a double exposed photograph, are the faint traces of a window set deep into a wall with a hinged shutter seen on the right. Through the four panes of the window is the interior of a room in shadow, interrupted by the reflection in the glass of a country road striped with shadows, and, on the far side of that interior, another window to a sun-soaked yellow-green roadbank in that country landscape. If you look closely you can just barely see that two of the striped shadows are of people walking hand in hand.