“Gloucester Blue”
The Sargent House Museum
July 2nd, 2017
Gloucester, MA
Oil on Aluminum Panel, 12 x 6 in

I was grateful to have the opportunity to paint at the Sargent House garden on an absolutely glorious summer day. I opted for a spot in full sun and was careful for the sake of being able to see my palette consistently to position myself so that even through the course of the 5 hours I was there no shadows would hit me. The downside of course was that it was a very hot day – not only was I roasting, but also the board I was working on! Generally I think of myself as relatively intelligent and yet it had somehow not occurred to me what the effect of a canvas primed black would be – effectively, a skillet.
I mixed & matched all my colours carefully and slapped them on the board in a hurry trusting I could resolve all the flaws the next day. Well, the next day the painting was dry as a desert and therefore unfixable. So I used my painting as a guide and the colours I had mixed on site and painted this the next day.
I got a little tour of the museum while I was there, including the John Singer Sargent room. The room features one of his old palettes, which I’m told features a colour blue that doesn’t match blues on any of his other palettes. It’s possible there’s a very dull reason for this – like he had run out of his preferred blue and had to settle for what there was available to him in Gloucester at the time… but I prefer to believe it is because of the unique roseate quality of light in Cape Ann, and that nowhere else do you see such a dizzyingly gorgeous violet blue skies.