Play

On the opening day of my Boothbay Harbor Workshop, I reminded students that the best way to achieve a breakthrough is to approach painting as play.   While this painting is no masterpiece, it was my response to a playful creation of a fellow artist here in Boothbay.

Mike Lewis is a fun-loving, wildly creative fellow.  His car is loaded down with coconut shells with painted faces, hubcaps, fishing tackle and netting, propellors, and other accessories.  So yesterday when I took my class to the newly built dock at Cozy Harbor and looked out at the small cove, I spotted a kind of Rube Goldberg craft that made me laugh outloud.

Two canoes had been tied together to form a kind of pontoon boat.  As small as it was, it sported three masts with some rather uncoventional sails.  Hung from various points on the boat were propellors, wind indicators, an orange life ring, flags, weathervanes and an umbrella on the stern.  The giveaway was a whale's head on the bowsprit.  Mike's signature flat sculpture is a whale with stones embedded in the mouth as teeth.  I just had to paint it!

Here is my less than serious depiction of Mike's floating Rube Goldberg!