Forest and Trees

Remember the old saying, "You can't see the forest for the trees."?   My goal is to paint the forest paying less tribute to individual trees.

In this painting of a dock scene in Boothbay Harbor,  there were buildings (too many), boats, (too many), pilings, awnings, dock debris, bait barrels, lobster traps, buoys (too many!)  You have to eliminate some things in order to say the most important thing.  For me in this instance, it was the afternoon light and shadows. 

Accuracy is not the same as art.  Ed Whitney once famously said, "I don't want the truth; I want a beautiful lie."  Someone else said,  "It's a poem not a police report."  Try to tell the story of what you saw, not the polaroid version.