Saved from a Cloud of Stinging Beasts!

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Philip Koch, Dune at Paine Hollow, oil on panel, 13 x 26 inches, 1984

There is a very funny story associated with this oil. I was up on Cape Cod in June of 1984 painting in the Paine Hollow area of S. Wellfleet, working from a tidal inlet off of Cape Cod Bay. Things were going well for the first hour or so when the wind shifted and a cloud of tiny black flies descended on me. I toughed it out for another 10 minutes but the swarm overwhelmed me and I raced back to the car with my painting. When I got back to the rental cottage I looked in horror at the wet painting’s surface which was covered with the tiny bodies of the insects.

I asked my daughters if they’d like the job of removing the bugs if I paid them a penny for each insect. They were young enough that to them this was serious money. Armed with palette knives they began meticulously picking off the critters. They were taking their task very seriously so I left them to it and took a shower to get the remaining bugs off of me.  About a half hour later they proudly came and found me, announcing I owed each of them $3.00. It would have been more they explained, but that they felt bad for me- after each of them had reached 300 carcasses they threw in the remaining 64 bugs for free.

The painting survived surprisingly well, having only hundreds of tiny white scrape marks where each bug had been removed. As the paint was still wet I carefully smoothed over as many of these marks as I could without destroying the overall brushwork. The piece ended up with a surface that was slightly more agitated than usual but I liked how that reminded me of the whole experience.





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