My Upcoming Showing and Talk at Highland House Museum in Truro Sept. 24, 2016

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This is Edward Hopper's 1930 watercolor of the Highland Light in North Truro, MA on Cape Cod. The painting is a masterpiece on a lot of levels. One thing I particularly love is how Hopper created a real drama of colors between his pale buildings and sky contrasting so sharply against the deep yellow ochres of his sun-drenched grasses. Hopper deftly included the sandy road in his foreground to break up what would have been a visually too empty field. By adding a note of less intense color in the bottom half of his painting he helps connect his foreground with the the painting's more pearly top half.

I'll be including a slide of this watercolor of Highland Light in the slide talk I am putting together for my event sponsored by Addison Art Gallery and the Truro Historical Society on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016 at the Highland House Museum in Truro. There will be a showing of six of the oil paintings I've made during my 16 residencies in Hopper's former studio in Truro. 

We will have a reception at 5:30 p.m. and the talk and discussion from 6:00 to 7:00. All welcome!



Hopper designed his studio himself down to the last nail and had it constructed in 1934. In it he would paint dozens of the canvases that have made him the world famous painter he is today.




The studio shares with his paintings a sort of straightforward and unassuming charm. Above is the studio's kitchen with the table where Hopper and his wife Jo would eat their breakfast. Below is a photo my wife Alice took of me walking back up the long winding path that leads from the shore of Cape Cod Bay up to the studio. In the distance is the studio with its iconic 10' tall north-facing window.



I have been studying the Hopper studio since I first went to stay there in 1983 In its way it offers clues to how Hopper's creative vision worked. While I am primarily a landscape painter I have undertaken a years long project of making paintings of the historic studio's interior. 

Below is one of my paintings that will be in the showing Sept. 24 at Highland House Museum Edward Hopper's Painting Room, oil on panel, 20 x 16", 2016. I painted it set up in the studio's small kitchen looking into Hopper's painting room. That's his easel in the distance on the left.




Let's end with one of my earliest oils of the studio's interior that's long since gone to a private collector, Rooms by the Sea, oil on canvas, 42 x 63". It was painted in the studio's painting room, with the doorway to the left opening to the studio's bedroom and the door to the right leading out to the bluff overlooking Cape Cod Bay.



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