Marblehead Morning

I live an hour from Lake Erie and I like to go there and paint. I've taken many photographs over the years and this is a painting of one of them: Marblehead Lighthouse. The photo was taken from the rocks in the early morning light.

16" x 20" oil on canvas

SOLD

Rework

When you have a painting that doesn't work you have one of two choices:

1) Attempt to fix it
2) Re-use the canvas as an underpainting for a new painting and hope the abstract shapes underneath add a little to the new painting on top.

I've had this lighthouse painting for a couple years. It is a plein air piece done on location and I was working on an unfamiliar (at the time) surface: a hand gessoed birch board. The gesso really sucks up the paint and is not the best surface for working plein air in the filed (I discovered later). You have to use a lot of paint and if the weather is warm it seems to suck the paint up even quicker!

This week I pulled out the painting and decided I would try to fix it. I like the texture of the gesso but I don't necessarily want to experiment outside the studio with it again. Much easier to control the process in the studio.

I like the new version better. I didn't change much except the foreground and the lighthouse windows. I also deepened the color of the sky and the reds in the lighthouse.