MARC CASTELLI / Laying Down The Sun
October 20 – November 20
During Downrigging our Exhibition Hours will be extended.
ALL EVENTS AT OUR 113 S. CROSS STREET GALLERY.
Friday, October 27 / 5-7:30 pm – Reception
Saturday, October 28 / 10 am – 5 pm – Artist Talk at 10 am and 1 pm
Sunday, October 29 / 11 am – 3 pm
Marc’s annual exhibition has become synonymous with Sultana’s Downrigging Festival. Now in its 23rd year, the Sultana Education Foundation’s Downrigging Weekend is one of the largest annual tall ship gatherings in North America. https://downrigging.org
Marc Castelli – Laying Down the Sun will be featured exclusively in our Cross Street gallery as it is fully handicapped accessible.
Please email or call Carla Massoni if you wish to schedule a private appointment:
info@massoniart.com / 410-708-4512
Every Creek, Every River, Every Cove
watercolor
12.75″ x 30″
86-year-old Johnny Kinnamon has lived on Tilghman Island for nearly all of his life, having spent but a few years in the Navy. He is a waterman and a boat builder. We have become fast friends over the past several years making me a very lucky person.
He has a great wealth of stories, a nearly bottomless depth of experiences from which he teaches me often with his usual sense of humor. This face has been etched with years of seasons making his face a map of his life on the waters of the Chesapeake. This day in the painting is his first day back on the water after months recovering from a triple bypass heart surgery. He doesn’t mind telling you that those months off the water, following his therapist’s instructions to the letter mind you, were some of the hardest he had. There is a lot of life in that face, and it got more and more animated as I joined him crabbing on his first day back. The blue in his eyes got brighter. It is hard for me to go even one week without two or three days on the water. Imagine how hard it is to do when it is all of your life.
Stars On The Chesapeake – SOLD
watercolor
9.25″ x 27″
A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to photograph an international world championship regatta of Star Boats class. The organizers had asked me if I would consider creating a painting of these racing machines for the regatta poster and donate the original to the sponsoring yacht club on the Tred Avon River of the Eastern Shore.
That project saw me gathering subject material on the Miles River during the Star Boat races on Wednesday evenings. Remarkably beautiful light at that time of day in the Fall. From that I also did several pen and ink drawings of these boats and had prints made of them to be used as the daily trophies. In return, surely you do not think I did this out of the generosity of my heart, I asked for the use of a photo boat from which I could take photos. After two days of a frustrating lack of winds, I had chosen a day with clouds on the western horizon. Many contestants would ask me if I thought there would be winds. I pointed out the freshening breezes and the clouds that would “bring the wind.” As luck would have it, the day turned out to be a spectacular one with over 60 boats on the starting line and mixing it up as they came together to round the marks. The light in the wake agitated waters streaming out from the boats as they accelerated through the rounding was quite beautiful.
Stars On The Run – SOLD
watercolor
17.25″ x 22″
This painting is from the same day as the other Star Boat Regatta series. Even though that regatta is now history, I still cannot escape the grace and beauty of these boats in that late afternoon light. When these boats are running with the wind, the crewman stands up on the bow to balance the boat. The light bleached the color from the sky and waters making for a brilliant, high-contrast image. There are still more from which to paint.
The Crabernacle / Brutta
watercolor
19″ x 15″
One of the very first watermen to agree to take me on was Dave Kirwan. His sons and my kids went to school together, we shared personal trials and losses. Even though I am not on his boat as often as I’d like, it would seem that not one second has passed when we do get together for a day on the water while he crabs from his boat, Brutta.
The name is a reference to the rather ungainly appearance of his boat. She was made from a houseboat hull by a clever waterman from Rock Hall who wanted a wide open, big boat from which to fish. She is as ugly as her name in Italian tells you. Despite the relative sameness of the activity of crab potting, each waterman has his own way of setting up the cull box and the baskets for sorting the catch. In this case, it struck me as some kind of tabernacle. The heart and cornerstone of the boat. I have a hard time passing on all manner of puns. This was a complicated image because of the multiple overhead LED light sources making for layers of shadows. There are images that will challenge me. Either it is the light, the seemingly increasing fascination with intricate light and shadows, or the very complicated nature of the subject. This challenge arises during the drawing of the image and then gets further demanding as I work my way through the image.
Laying Out The Side Timbers
watercolor
22″ x 30″
The Kinnamons have been very generous with their time, sense of humor, and answers. I have taken enough photos of them building boats that I am now able to create a set of what it takes for them to build a deadrise workboat from beginning to launch. It is this father/son team that have been building boats for many years now.
The boats are wood framed, sheeted with plywood, and the layered with fiberglass. I made a trip down to Tilghman this day to watch and photograph them putting in the side timbers. The light from the large windows lit J.C. up in a most Caravaggio-like manner. I had nearly finished this painting but was somewhat disappointed with what I wanted to capture. The light on the figure just wasn’t as isolated as I wanted. I then used a trick taught to me by the noted sculptor Ken Herlihy. I took a dark piece of paper and laid it on one of the windows. I knew then the window had to go in order for the light to resume its primacy. So…I painted it out. Some tell me that I am too photo derivative. My riposte is telling them I do depend on my photos for much of the image. In fact, I make a very complete drawing on the paper. Having all that information allows me to pick and choose what to keep and what to do away with. I then put it away and make a painting out of it. Some things are brought forward, some are made to retreat, and others are put away.
The Bateau
watercolor
15″ x 22″
This is J.C. Kinnamon working alongside his father as he builds a skiff or bateau. They do not work from plans, preferring to use the traditional “rack of the eye” method. The only thing I know of that is written down are a set of angles for two or three parts of the boat that they use in nearly all of their workboats. Johnny was building this one for a young man down Bay who wanted to use it for fishing catfish pots.
This waterman told them how much sheer he wanted in a skiff they were going to build for him. In fact, he came and drew it out for them. Both looked askance at the image and tried to talk him out of it. Believing the customer might be right most of the time, they used his lines, cut the plywood out and tacked it up. Nope. They were not going to build it and told him so. The young man came, saw it, and agreed it needed to be more traditional. Then Johnny once told me that in the upper Bay these small watercrafts are called bateaus while below the bridge they are referred to as skiffs. This painting is another instance of chiaroscuro, the drama in the contrasts of light and dark spaces. I have felt the importance of generations working together in the water business. Getting to watch, asking questions, and listening to them making small changes based solely on experience and taste is a special treat. Though telling them so would make them laugh. Here, the light on the figures is the reason for the image. This one also has an added benefit of a seemingly abstract shape of the bateau’s side being bathed in the strong light.
Best Season In 34 Years – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 30″
I have had the opportunity to be invited to accompany and work alongside many watermen. I rarely ever regret the drive to do so and the o-dark thirty hours of driving to get there can be daunting. This Bay has an amazing group of people, its watermen, that few will ever know or realize the details of their work. These gentlemen, father and son, are from Deal Island on the Eastern Shore.
I have been honored by their letting me go out with them, enjoying their company, ribbing, and stories while working. In this painting we are oystering out of Mount Vernon, which is west of Princess Anne, MD. The dock is at the end of a very long road situated on the edges of a very small community. This oyster season, due to the great spat set from Mother Nature several years earlier, was a record year for bushels of oysters harvested – 330,000 something bushels. The best in nearly 35 years! Not only did the oystermen catch their limits through the end of the season, but many managed to get their daily limit by 10 in the morning. That season I sometimes drove longer than I worked. The father was until recently the pastor on the island. At eighty something he is feisty, funny, and great company. His son is just as proud of his new-to-him boat as is his father of him. These oysters were so beautiful and so plentiful that the work was not only rewarding it was confirming and actually fun. You can see the size of these beautiful oysters in this picture as they spill from the dredge. So many great photos of a lot of boats starting to work in the really beautiful sunrise. Great light!
The Crack Of Dawn – SOLD
watercolor
30″ x 22″
Working on the water starts before the sun rises and ends with laying down the sun, as a 77-year-old waterman once told me. Of late, I have been paying more and more attention to the skies under which the watermen work. The skies at sunrise can be quiet, can be dramatic, and sometimes very abstract. I remembered an exhibition of Mark Rothko paintings I had seen as I painted this very color field abstraction of a sunrise from a day of oystering. It is very rich in color and the sun is breaking out of the top of a cloudbank close to the horizon. While it may look like I left reality in this one, it is very true to the photo.
Running One Way – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 15″
This is the son of a waterman carrying on the work of trotlining for crabs much as his father did in the very same boat his father bult. The scene is on Gray’s Inn Creek off the Chester River. Figuring out what the crabs are doing and where they are doing it is quite a challenge. I have to admit that I am somewhat amused by the fact that these blue crabs have the tiniest of brains and yet seem to frustrate watermen on a daily basis.
I was once told that if you are on the crabs you are probably a day late. The only thing most watermen will admit to being sure about crabs is that they come, they go, and they bite. Running one way means that a waterman crabbing with a trotline has figured out that he will do better running one way along his line instead of both ways. The usual best way is called sunny side. This means that the sun is on the side of the line that the trotline is. Many believe that shadows spook crabs off the bit. But I have seen days when the shadow side seems to catch better. See what I mean? You just don’t know and have to take each day’s challenges as they come. In this case the waterman is culling his crabs while running back to a buoy marking the other end of his trotline. Gray’s Inn Creek at dawn and into the morning is for me one of the most beautiful little creeks where I have spent time.
Remember To Hydrate – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 15″
One year the DNR opened up an oyster bar on the Chester River to a limited number of days to harvest. This bar had not been opened for such active management in several years. Boats came from all over to hand tong their daily limit for nearly a week. There were many boats on this opening day. It started out in one of the thickest fogs I have seen.
Some boats without the benefit of GPS had to follow close on to other boats as they left the various docks. Once we were at the right spot, we had to wait until the sunrise to start as the law mandates. It was interesting to hear boats coming up the river and watching them as they emerged from the fog. I had heard from many watermen of such a day and was as excited as a young kid to be out to watch whatever was going to happen. I began to see quite a few boats as the sun topped the fog bank and a little breeze came up. I even got the reward of a bright red sun coming up on smooth waters in the background as latecomers arrived on scene. Everywhere I looked there were amazing things to see and capture in photos. The bar is relatively small, and it got quite crowded as the boats dragged down the bar using the back and forth sheer of tide and then came back up to the head of the bar to drift back down over and over. I had always heard of days like this but was quickly reminded that this was really nothing compared to how it was back in the 1970s. I will always hear this and in some ways regret coming to this amazing way of life as late as I have. But… I am also lucky to be able to have 30 or so years of being out there for 2 or 3 days a week all year long. This young oysterman was working from a boat quite close to us and working from the stern most part of the washboards as he gathered up a lick or grab of oysters with his hand tongs. His colorful oilskins reflect the changing tastes and the availability of such gear. It was his place on the boat, his oil skins, that attracted me to the possibility of an image. It wasn’t until I started in on the drawing that I noticed the several colorful packs of Gatorade on the deck behind him that the title came to mind. I still have plans to paint from that amazing day.
Long Cove / 4:45 AM – SOLD
watercolor
30″ x 22″
I race down to the docks on the mornings of full moons. One can still see the moon despite having to compete with the bulkhead lights. These two light sources make for an interesting competition of sorts. Rarely does the moon cast such an orange light, but the incandescent lights used at the dock do so. This is one of those moments where adherence to the photograph can produce awkward situations.
There are a lot of interesting shapes receding into the night, reflections, caustics of light as they play on the hulls and other details. So, I get to compensate, emphasize, and/or reduce such aspects of the light. Anyway, it is not often when one gets to see such a moon. In this case it is called a Buck Moon. This moon was so bright that I was able to use my telephoto lens to get some interesting shots of its surface. Even better were the shots of the moonlight on the water. That’s for another painting. Being out on the water so early enables me to see many things like shooting stars, moonlight on the tops of cumulus storm clouds, and backlit cirrus clouds with stars.
Oystering In The Mountains Off Tangier – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 30″
Tangier Sound, off of Tangier Island, Virginia, in the lower Bay can be an incredibly rough patch of water. Especially when the wind is against the tide. It takes a lot of learned and inherent boat handling skills to maintain the course when dredging in circles on an oyster bar. Forty-foot workboats can disappear in the swale or trough in a set of swells topped with waves, only to have them pop up on the swell next to you.
I have to admit to really enjoying such seas as the opportunity to take pictures of men working in them tells a story of risk, seamanship, and dogged determinism. Given their druthers they would prefer lesser harsh conditions, and I don’t blame them in the least bit. One has to remember that these men work in incredible wide-ranging conditions to harvest seafood to feed people. It’s not like thinking that one’s drive to the office can be just as dangerous. Obviously, I have a lot of respect for the watermen and am continually in awe of their determination to be out there nearly every day following the water, harvesting seafood to feed people, and to putting food on their own tables. I have also done this scene once before using it as a way to measure how much my eye has changed and if I am learning anything. The jury is still out…
Soft Shells For Dinner / Smith Island – SOLD
watercolor
30″ x 22″
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to stay with the family of a Rock Hall waterman who hailed from Smith Island, Maryland. I have crabbed and oystered with him over the years. I credit his wife enabling my introduction to the rather private world of watermen. I am and will always be in her debt for that.
Anyway…during my long weekend, that was not long enough, I was able to go crabbing with the father, meet other watermen, enjoy the great food and company, and the family’s patience for my many questions. Revisiting the volume of color slides from that trip, I came upon this complicated scene of the waterman preparing soft shell crabs for that night’s dinner. He is almost invisible in the woven geometries. It struck me as resembling the walk up to and through the torii of a Shinto temple. There is much about the Japanese I have studied over the years and much of it still resonates. Last year a tornado struck Smith Island. Other than the pride in the richness of family, traditions of the water, their history and deep abiding faith, the people do not have a lot. When you consider such qualities much of what some would think valuable pales in comparison. I had finished a pen and ink drawing earlier of this scene which led me to paint a watercolor of it. Hearing of the storm and its damage and then watching the phone video of the tornado violence as it struck houses left me speechless. I then decided to add something to the growing effort of raising funds. I went to the Finishing Touch in Chestertown and worked with the IT guy to scan and then make ten prints of the drawing which I signed, numbered, and titled to be used as a fund raiser. The owner of the store a longtime friend of mine then posted the offer online, and it did rather well, selling out in less than two hours. I have to tell you that the owner of the Finishing Touch did the scan, the printing, and online work pro bono. Good people. I am a rich man for having such folk in my life.
Clams Got Too Expensive
watercolor
22″ x 15″
Sometimes it is not the subject but the shapes and light that will catch my eye resulting in a quick, off the cuff type of shot. Justifying having taken such a shot is a later function of the way my brain works. It can often result in a deletion. Working with a digital camera has given me the opportunity to shoot more from the hip making for more “intuitive” imagery.
This image is of a bucket of bait fish. To be more exact the fish are called many things by watermen. Mossbunkers, bunker, and buggies are a couple of names for a fish known as menhaden. The book, The Men All Singing, is a good introduction to the industry built up on these fish. Another more up to date book would be The Most Important Fish in the Sea. The large industrial menhaden fisheries of the Down Bay waters have come under a lot of pressure from groups like Green Peace and some foundations and associations. The shotgun, wide net approach to managing the menhaden fishery in the bay is poorly conceived and mainly powered by national politics instead of seeing the uniqueness of the estuary that is the Bay. Much like the same issue that national conservation associations seem to have about the management of rock fish. That is a topic for another day. In this picture the bucket is of frozen menhaden broken in half to be used in crab pots for bait. Buggies are cheaper than razor clams these days. “Razors” have been the bait of choice for many crab potters over the years. Shrimp heads and bunkers will suffice at times. Something about the shapes, shiny scales, vacant stares, multiple shadows, and a touch of red paint attracted me to the painting possibilities.
Second Hand Rain – SOLD
watercolor
18″ x 30″
Oystering at sunrise can give you some amazing opportunities for pictures. The title is a faint reference to a saying about the forest after a rain when it seems as if the rain is still falling. It refers to the fact when you are either dredging or patent tonging oysters there is always water dripping for the overhead rig of lines, mast, and gaffs.
I always have to cover my camera when walking beneath the rig. In the direct sunlight that has just broken the horizon the light catches the drops in so many ways. The colors of the light on his white oilskins attracted me to the opportunity. The light reflected off the front of his oil skins onto the inside of his arm really caught my eye. The oysterman in this scene is a close friend of mine with whom I have spent many hundreds of hours working on the water. I like this piece as it is a good portrait of him and the watchful eye that watermen have when working.
Wax Paper Day
watercolor
22″ x 30″
This is another image from the day in the painting “Remember to Hydrate”. The fog was so thick that it seemed to bleach the colors from the boats, leaving just hints here and there while making the boats themselves nearly silhouettes in the half light.
They Dropped The Price Again
watercolor
9″ x 30″
This news is nothing any oysterman wants to hear especially just before Thanksgiving or Christmas and New Years. These two boats with their hand-tongers are discussing that very thing. It seems as if the buyers have bought everything they will need for the holiday market and then cut the prices that watermen will get for their oysters off the boat. Just in time for their holiday needs and dinners. Bad news spreads quickly on the water.
Listen To The Light – SOLD
watercolor
11″ x 30″
This piece is all about the conditions of light in the post-sunrise mornings. Can’t say much more than that without ruining the impression.
Now!
watercolor
22″ x 30″
The increasing number of people on the Bay has caused an interesting change in the layout of crab boats used by watermen who no longer use drop pots but are using trotlines. Trotlines have flags (hawks at either end and in this case usually have around 15 or so crab pots on them.
So many people out on the bay are either ignorant of what they see out on the waters of the bay or are just plain careless about how they run around the bay, or just plain do not care about the buoys used to indicate the presence of crab pots. Some boat owners will instruct the boatyard to put line cutters on their boats so that they can just run through crab pots while cutting off the buoys or corks as they are called. A crab pot can cost around 45 dollars these days. Losing them can be a fiscal hardship. So, to cut down on the loss of losing crab pots to these idiots the watermen started putting them on trotlines, thus reducing the number of corks and then just using flags to mark the ends and beginnings of their lines. So. You start to fish a trot line by raising up the pot, threading the line through a hydraulic winder, unsnapping the pot from the line, empty out the crabs and old bait, rebait and stack on a deck built out from the stern. It is this stern rack that is now the norm for most boats. So, in this picture the skipper is signaling “Now” to the crew in the back of the boat to toss the hawk and start hanging pots on the trotline as it goes back over.
Waking Up The Creek / Gray’s Inn
watercolor
11″ x 30″
This is a boat named “Nipper” just two workboats built by Junior Seinfeld. When he passed away several years ago, he actually died on his boat while trotlining for crabs. His son came upon the boat as it circled the end of the trotline. A good friend of mine and his tells me that was probably the way he wanted to go. He was what they call a “river-rat.”
One of the only times he left the Chester River was to go into the army. He spent his life on the water of the Chester River. His son now owns and works on the boat. Nipper was built to oyster. I have always felt that she is one of the prettiest deadrise workboats I have seen and been on. She has a low cabin to keep the windage down and wide washboards. Anyway, she is seen here at sunrise on Gray’s Inn Creek running the trotline out to the river. I like the low vantage point as it allows the waterman’s head to break the tree line against the sunrise.
Snagging Cats
watercolor
11″ x 30″
Blue catfish are an invasive species that will threaten the rest of any fish in the Chesapeake Bay and tributaries. They are voracious and have become over 70% of the biomass in the James River, Virginia. Unfortunately for Maryland and the Chesapeake watershed, Virginia decided under extreme influence from Virginia sports fishermen associations to allow the importation of blue cats to the VA waters to enhance its sport and recreational fishing experience.
Someone in VA really blew it by allowing this to happen. I personally witnessed and have documented with my camera the increasing numbers of these fish in waters that we were initially told would stay down Bay in warmer and less fresh waters. Much has been written about solutions to the ever-growing problem. What little has been done is encouraging but so much more needs to be done and quickly. The popular solution is to eat more of them. The problem with that is the state will not encourage enterprising people to take out loans to build processing plants that will pass health department, department of environment, and department of natural resources regulations. Mind you, I have eaten blue cats and find them quite tasty. BUT! We will never be able to control or eat our way out of these species unless we incentivize the only people already with necessary gear to catch them in large enough numbers to build more processing plants for eating filets. Two other methods do exist. Ones that do not need the intervention of health department inspections nor clean room facilities to produce. Grinding up these fish for cat food is one and the other is grinding the fish up for fertilizer. To depend on the watermen to catch these fish in any great numbers they will have to be subsidized just as the farmers are with a guaranteed lower end price of 50 to 60 cents a pound. This makes the effort more cost effective. Until state and federal legislators get on the need to act now bandwagon this threat will continue to grow exponentially. As happens now the market price can range from 10 cents to 50 cents a pound. The power end results from a glut on the market. No waterman will go out and spend fuel, bait, gear, and time expenses to fish for anything less than 50 or 60 cents a pound. In this picture the waterman is gaffing a good-sized blue cat from the long line of baited hooks. He caught more of them and bigger ones. I am still exploring the subject. At the time the price wasn’t spectacular, but the fishing could be done after crabbing or before in the early morning. It takes time to bait each hook at a time and then set the line in the evening after working on other harvests. Some of these fish can weigh up to 60 lbs. They literally will eat everything.
The Good Lord Giveth
watercolor
22″ X 15″“
Sonny Benton is 80 years old in this picture. He is both a waterman and the pastor from Deal Island. He also is an irascible character with a great sense of humor. He is pictured with his son in the painting, “Best Season in 34 Years.” Here, he is so excited and proud of the size of the oysters that they harvested that day and for that matter that season. His face carried so much of his life in it and the eyes, the eyes. I enjoyed his company and welcomed the good-natured fun he poked at me. It was a day of incredible light, skies, and water.
Biscuit
watercolor
22″ X 15″
Biscuit Beck taught me a lot about culling river oysters. Especially oysters that grew in fresher waters of the upper Bay and tributaries. He is the father and uncle to some of the other watermen in this collection. I have known for many years that I stand just inside the outer edge of the watermen community. It allows them to have great fun at my expense, but it is and has always been good-natured.
For that I am extremely grateful and a bit proud for that acceptance. I have never been reticent about asking questions especially when the answer is so obvious to those I am asking. I was once told after apologizing for what could be asking a lot of seemingly stupid questions, that it was alright, stupid answers were still free. In this instance we are oystering on the Chester River. When oysters grow in the fresher waters of the upper Bay they can have a lot of mussels growing on them. The buyer won’t accept a bushel of oysters with mussels on them. These clusters can be quite large and have to be wrung off, chopped off by ax, or hammered off. If you were to take a bushel with a lot of mussels on the oysters the buyer wouldn’t be getting what he was paying for. Now some watermen would call a couple of mussels covered oysters in a bushel, “inflation busters.” Biscuit would pass me these basketball-sized clumps with an oyster in the center. It was my job to do as he did to wring off the mussels and/or chop them off with a piece of heavy bar steel or a hand ax. Ones hands, wrists, and arm get pretty sore after several hours of such work. I enjoy such work. Anyway… Every now and then he would pass such a conglomeration to me, and I would set to work. Eventually, I’d lay bare the center of the mass and it would be a stone. I’d give him the stink eye and he’d give a loud laugh. I asked him how he knew, and he would say he didn’t. He was also known for his fashionable penchant for porkpie or be-bop hats. Biscuit passed away several years ago.
Diamonds In The Rough – SOLD
watercolor
30″ x 22″
This is yet another instance of early morning light while patent tonging outside of Rock Hall. These tongs are heavy pieces of steel and iron work that resemble a pair of long toothed rakes that when opened can be dropped down to the oyster bar, where the use of such gear is legally allowed, and then closed on hopefully a grab of legal sized oysters, raised to the surface, and then swung up and over to deposit the oysters on to a cull board.
The gear is then raised up, kept open, and allowed to freefall back to the bottom for yet another grab. It is highly repetitive and could be mind-numbing, but you have to watch for good, legal oysters (3” and larger) to cull into a bushel container and avoid tossing any empty shell, dead oysters (called boxes, or gapers) into the bushel. You are allowed only a very small percentage of such cultch in a bushel. Lots of water is shed from the overhead arrangement of lines, pulleys, mast, and boom. For many years I would see the shadow on the operator cast on the spray made by the gear being dropped back into the water. I saw it so well one time so many years ago that I still keep an eye out for that original example of which I never got a photo. In this instance I came close. There was no other way to keep the drops of water so bright other than painting around each and every drawn out one of them. These paintings are excuses to paint the myriad conditions of light and water that these men can be found working in. There are so many instances during a year on the water for such inspirations.
Johnny Kinnamon @ 84
watercolor
15″ x 22″
The record of this man and his son of building affordable and durable deadrise workboats for over 50 years is impressive. Johnny started out and eventually his son J.C. joined him and now Johnny helps out his son as he carries on the traditional work. I have been so very lucky that they let me come into their shop, take pictures as I walk around, climb up on and crawl in and around the boats as they work.
At times we share stories about quite a few things other than boats and the water business. They both have a great sense of humor. Humor and a sense of irony seem to be a necessary means of surviving the vagaries of being watermen. I took this picture early in my friendship of Johnny standing on the dock that runs along part of Knapps Narrows. One of their boats is tied up alongside. His face is an amazing collection of lines, rivers, creeks, and coves. The flannel is the usual uniform of the day for most watermen in the Fall, Winter, and early Spring. It is one of the three or maybe four things I will be doomed to paint while enduring purgatory. The other three are fish net, long grasses, and now I have added camouflage to my “misery.”
Everybody Watching Everybody – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 30″
Back to that amazing and wonderful day of fog on the Chester River. Boats would emerge and then fade back into that “dungeon thick” fog for most of the morning. Eventually, the sun and a slight breeze came up to sweep the water clean of the fog revealing a substantial number of boats on the one bar. In 2006 the state confiscated many hand tong oyster bars for their sanctuary program/experiment.
Restoration of oysters was the order of the day and the industry be damned. Oddly enough many of the choices for the sanctuaries were hand tong bars. I say oddly because the gear type, hand tongs, is the least destructive form of harvesting and leaves many oysters on the bar. Being the least destructive also means the least effective. Keeping bars devoted to that specific gear type actually keeps a higher level of sustainability. Many of the oyster bars on the Chester River were taken despite the annual rotational opening and closing nature of their management. The then O’Malley/Griffin DNR partnership went whole hog on restoration while leaving the previous partnership of the industry and department in a pool of disbelief and growing mistrust. But…this day the state reopened the bar for a limited period of harvest. Watermen and boats came from all over the bay. After some serious harvesting the bar was closed again and has stayed that way for many years. River Keepers can get quite upset with any mention of active management of sanctuaries that would involve annual planting, and rotational openings and closures. It is hard to argue with anything that would improve the health of an oyster bar and also increase the numbers of oysters by planting seed on shell and bar cleaning. But the state legislature isn’t open to the idea.
Methusela And Cheetah-Mike
watercolor
15.25″ x 22″
A year or so ago the Kent County oyster committee in conjunction with Queen Anne’s committee opened an oyster bar for harvesting. This bar had not seen a lot of active management and some sporadic planting by the counties. It was a hand tong/dive bar. As it had not been open for quite a while, a friend and I decided to see how many watermen would show up.
There were a couple of dive boats and several hand tong boats. Among them was this very different two-tone workboat. The hooded tonger had the most amazing beard streaming down wind from his face. Most definitely a different face and boat. As I worked through the drawing I came upon what looked like a stuffed monkey attached to a post on the boat. This oddity had me going to Google for the name of Tarzan’s monkey compatriot. We all know him as Cheetah. But the whole name was Cheetah Mike. The total image resonated with one of kind bits and pieces.
Mud and Mussels
watercolor
15″ X 22″
This is Junior Seinfeld culling oysters on his boat Nipper which he built. He built her from which to oyster. Its low cabin made for very little windage which helped to keep the boat on the oysters. Her wide washboards made walking and working the hand tongs a lot easier. Culling is dirty work.
I would be quite dirty with oyster mud, bits and pieces of cultch, and a face speckled with mud after culling for 6 or 7 hours to get our limit. I would drop into a gas station and look for a quick sandwich to eat on the way home. The only other people standing in line that were in the same condition were other oystermen. Many I had seen out on the same bar and had taken their pictures. The situation made for interesting conversation comparing notes on the day. Anyway…Junior and his son Freddy would work the boat and hand tongs each day they were out. Each would show up in the morning with his own Mason jar of coffee. Junior spent most of his life on the waters of the Chester River. In some of these portraits I spent a lot of time working with very fine and small brushes. Getting these faces right with their character carved into them by the weather, sun, wind, ice, and snow, it became very important. This meant going ever so slowly and carefully building up very thin layers of paint. Eyes became even more important as they would tell you how the person felt about being singled out by the camera. If you look really close at the eyes in this piece, you can see some attitude about having the camera swing his way. Capturing that became very important, and I feel like I came pretty close to that look of askance. It did not take me long to become an accepted nuisance while long photographing these men at work on their boats and at the dock. I always made and still do make it a point to give them 8 X 12 prints from photos of them as a way to say thanks. These photos also become memories for them as they get older and then become more important to their families after they have run out their string. Over the years many family members have come to me for photos of a loved one who has passed on to be part of the celebration and remembrance at funerals. It is humbling to be able to be a small part of that community.
Iced In
watercolor
30″ x 22″
Being out on the water all year long has its extremes of weather and light. This painting is about a set of poles used in more moderate times to anchor live boxes for eels out of the main thoroughfare in a creek. But, the nature of fishing pound nets and especially fykes has some working their gear out in the cold mornings.
The out of the river’s mainstream cove in which these poles are iced in can be very calm allowing the fresher waters of this river to freeze several times in the winter. The main channel is more active and if one can break out of the ice then you can go fish your nets. Most pound nets have been taken up along with their poles by now. Leaving a pound net in the river too long can result in the ice tearing up the nets and snapping off the poles just at water level making for not only a mess but a navigation hazard later on. The textures of the ice, the linear aspects of the poles and shadows caught my eye, and I took several shots as the fishing boat I was in broke ice in and around the pens the men kept fish in for the live market. It is all about the light and the ice.
Twenty Fours
watercolor
22″ x 30″
The number 24s refers to the length of the shafts of the set of hand tongs this oysterman is using. The length used can differ according the depth of water an oysterman is working in. Twenty-four feet or there abouts is where the oysters are that need to be gathered up by feel and raised to the surface to then be levered up to the cull board to be boarded for culling.
If the waters are too shallow, the tongs will wave about overhead as they are worked making it impossible to fight them and get a grab. If you are in waters too deep, then the you are trying to get a grab using the bitter ends of the shafts. Finding the right length is a matter of local knowledge, past history of the bar, and trying to get the right timing for wind and tide. The difficulties happen when the tide is against the wind pushing the boat over the oysters where you are trying to work. It’s not easy despite the aid of a hydraulic winder to help raise what could be twenty to forty pounds of oysters to the cull board. Setting the drag weights right can help keep the bow into the wind if it is stronger than the tide. A good “lay” is when the tide or current slowly drags you down the length of the oyster bar and you only have to move back up to the starting point maybe just a handful of times. A rough day implies constantly having to adjust the boat with the engine to stay on the bar. Incredibly frustrating to say the least. Sometimes the wind and tide seem to conspire to keep you off of the oysters or just a few feet away from them. Hand tongs can be called stupid sticks and/or widow makers. It isn’t easy. It is something I’ll never step up to do. I am satisfied with being a fairly decent and quick culler. No one has gotten a ticket for anything I have ever culled. I enjoy the unspoken trust that comes from giving everything I can to do a decent job.
Shards
watercolor
30″ x 22″
The skipper on the log canoe, Jay Dee, that I have been racing on for over 30 years now recently ordered a new fore sail. A good portion of the crew usually sits underneath this huge mass of sail when the foredeck crew is bending it on and preparing to go up with it on the fore mast. It was so very clean, white, brand new noisy and from underneath so full of light.
I have always taken a camera with me when sailing. Over the 30 years or so I have lost only three cameras when racing. Log canoes can be quite tender and capsizes happen quite often. I find the views from onboard to be very different than the normal off boat shots of these brutally elegant indigenous thoroughbreds. Images like this of the light folded into and through the sail cloth are very abstract with few if any informative details. It is a major leap for me to attempt such a complex and deceiving in its simplicity watercolor. Am looking forward to seeing it framed and properly lit.
Dog Fight – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 15″
Chesapeake Bay Sailing Log Canoes are very esoteric, barely known outside of the very tight circle of people who own and race them on the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. I have had the good fortune to be associated with and taken in by the North family who have roots that go further into the history of the elegant watercraft than any other family.
Being able to carve out a place in one of the largest log canoes, the Jay Dee, has given me many years of opportunities to photograph them as very few others have had the chance. This is mainly because there is no room for spectators on a boat that has as its primary concern the balance between power and weight. Everybody has a job or several jobs. There is no fixed keel for these over canvased log canoes. A centerboard is all that they have, and that is due to the shoal waters of the four rivers that they race in over seven or so weekends in the summer. I have raced sailboats for well over 45 years. Have photographed many classes of sailboats, been sponsored to attend to five America’s Cups, watched various Cup challengers as they go through sea trials, and then followed them twice to their final venues in San Diego, twice to New Zealand, and then to the last of the “normal” monohull Cups in Valencia, Spain. Have also been able to go to the UK to watch and photograph the start of the last Whitbread Round the World Races in which the locally sponsored Chessie participated. I was also invited to catch the fleet of Whitbread 60s as they came up the Bay for the end of one leg and then to shoot the start as they set out for another leg. I have photographed the U.S.N.A. inter-collegiate regatta, the Kennedy Cup here on the Bay, and also a recent Star Boat World Championship Regatta sponsored by the Tred Avon Yacht Club of Oxford. I was asked to provide artwork for a “Round the World Challenge” to go out during sea trials and to shoot the start. That race is done against the wind so to speak, and each yacht has but two professional sailors on board by one of the yacht sponsors. I bring all of this up to say that it is the log canoes that have a special place in my heart. Many people with years of sailing experience come on board and begin to tell everyone just how they did things and how they feel things should be done. I always tell them this boat ain’t like no other boat they have sailed on and to keep their mouths shut, watch, and learn they are to do their jobs with silence and celerity. These log canoes are actually built from logs and the oldest one, Island Bird, dates back to 1882. It is the uniqueness of their rigs, the geometries of their sails and the empty negative spaces that these rigs carve from the sky that just keep on inspiring me. In this image you have three log canoes of various sizes, there are no one-design scantlings in this class, each one is different. These three are starting to jockey for clean wind and starting line advantages as they approach the starting line. For the moment it is quiet, but as they get closer to the line the yelling starts with many voices claiming, “right of way,” “windward boat stay clear,” and other exotic commands. I love the start as it decides so much for the rest of the race in the ten minutes leading up to the gun signaling the race is underway.
Look Ma No Hands / Island Blossom – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 30″
As I stated earlier, the crew on these log canoes literally sail by the seat of their pants. The boardmen use the weight of their bodies to keep the hull on its best lines giving the whole craft its optimum speed. I have always thought of the crew as the ligaments that enable the muscles (sails) to give their best.
I am not sure what it says about me, but I have never wanted to touch the wheel or rudder on any boat I spend time on. I am a crewman. I like to give my absolute best to enable the skipper to maximize the mission of the day. I take great satisfaction in learning a job and becoming an integral part of the machine, family, or creature that is the crew on any type of boat. The boardmen in this watercolor are working their way out to the ends of the springboards that are used to find the balance between control and disaster. If you look close enough, you can see a boardman rather awkwardly taking his life in his hands by trying to get to his board while not having a hand for the boat.
Oh Crap
watercolor
15″ x 22″
I had the great photo op to follow these five boats down the Tred Avon as they raced to one of the course marks. I have been increasingly fascinated and drawn to the multiple overlapping shapes that happen when several log canoes are in tight competition. While shooting from a chase boat I took a lot of pictures of these boats, and I noticed through the masts and sails that a rig of masts and sails from one of the canoes was starting to lean waaaaay over.
Eventually, no matter how much the crew gets out on the boards during one of these moments it is gravity that takes over and pulls the rig down into the water. I could almost hear the expletives of which “Oh, Crap” was the least vulgar. And I just kept shooting through the course of the capsize as the other canoes made course adjustments to keep from running over anyone, the rig, and sails. It wasn’t until I got home, downloaded my pictures, and started to edit them that I noticed one crewman managed to stay up on the end of his now vertical board until he had to jump into the water. I have painted over 450 watercolors of the racing log canoes. Recently, I have started to focus on the sail geometries and the weather extremes in which we race. I will continue to paint the classic views as they are classic for many reasons. It isn’t often that you can get such shots that can tell stories like this one.
Regatta Day Oxford – SOLD
watercolor
18″ x 30″
I have of late been working on long, narrow pieces of paper. I find that these grounds can better emphasize certain compositional elements. Like the aggressive angles of the numerous masts and nearly crescent like shadows of sails on other sails punctuating the horizon in this sky dominant watercolor. The shot was taken from down on the leeward rail of the log canoe in which I am crewing. I am actually inches from the water as it rushes by in the bow wave. It is from such positions that I can find the important textures and colors in the waters.
At The Lists
watercolor
11″ x 30″
There is a certain note of stark cleanliness in this image that I found particularly attractive. What appealed to me were the linear elements of the hand tong shafts reaching forward over the cabins of these two oyster boats in the late afternoon light. I found the nearly bleached smooth sky and the band of pure light on the horizon echoed by the sun on the foredecks, and the cabin soles to be most interesting. Their proximity tells you how close these men are willing to work when they are on the oysters. It can be highly competitive at times.
It’s Never The Same
watercolor
11″ x 30″
As I have said many times, my paintings are excuses to paint water. I must have several thousand photos of just the water in which we are working. I have realized that it is time to paint some of them. This is the first such depiction in what I hope will be many more to come. It is never the same. So many words to describe this ever-changing surface and the way that it reflects the light and allows itself to be influenced by the winds and breezes and changed by the seasons. And yet there are men willing to try on a daily basis to wrest a living from it. Remarkable.
Stalking – SOLD
watercolor
22″ X 30″
This waterman, Buster Elburn, had a small workboat with an inboard outboard for power. I have painted him before as he sounded for oysters with an old hand tong shaft. I have drawn him on his boat heading out. I have found the term “catching oysters” to be mildly amusing. It conjures these mollusks actually moving about as watermen try to follow them and catch them. That’s just me. But… one day a good friend and I were really on the oysters. He looked at me over the increasingly muddy cull board and said,” We’re on their trail now.” I spent a lot of time on the water in this painting. Three, four-to-five-hour days to be sure of putting the hint of the background sunrise in the bits and pieces of the wind rippled waters as the boat makes its way out to stalk the “wiley” oyster.
Headed Home
watercolor
15″ x 30″
This day started out with overcast skies, an approaching squall line of wind reefs, and then the sky opened up for a few minutes letting in the overhead sun to illuminate the waters around us in an unearthly green. That is something for a later painting. And then did it ever rain, with winds against the tide the conditions for hand tonging were difficult.
This waterman has jumped through all of the state mandatory hoops to be able to sell his own oysters. When we head out I always ask, “How many do you need today?” He is a great big human being and can fill a cull board to overflowing in a matter of minutes. It isn’t a matter of how quickly I work trying to chip off all spat less than 3 inches from the legal oysters and pass over the cultch. I still can’t keep up with him. I seem to have settled down into a rhythm of harvests in which I spend that season with certain watermen each year. I have never crabbed with this gentleman and have only recently been eel potting with him. We oyster together. Some watermen I just crab with. Others I crab and fish with. I have oystered with him for many years. I enjoy his company and admire his intense work ethic and the profound love he has for his family. But…In this portrait one can see the years of trials, challenges met, and the feeling of having met and risen to the challenge to meet the needs of the day despite the frustrations. He has a remarkable set of lines emanating from his eyes.
Willow Eels
watercolor
30″ x 22″
Read a book by Patrik Svensson simply titled Eels. I cannot recommend it highly enough. He has written about the eels and their mysteries in a most sensitive and beautiful manner. There is much to learn from this book and most of all much that is simply just not known about these creatures. He writes in the most insightful way about the men who work the water. I am envious at his wordsmithing and ability to string words together that put you in the stories.
Anyway…in the discourse about what little we actually know about the lifecycle of eels, he uses the phrase “willow eels.” In my excitement I had folded and creased the corner of that page so hard that it needed to be taped back on. In my mind’s eye I pictured willow leaves in and around an eel pot. The next day I asked to borrow an eel pot from a waterman I know who eel pots during the year. He left it in the back of his pickup truck at the dock from where we both would leave to crab on different boats. I took it home. Then I went to a neighbor who has a weeping willow tree in his yard and got permission to cut some branches from the tree for the project. I then created I guess what you might call a still life from these two elements, took a lot of pictures, rearranging them several times. Discovering certain arrangements that spoke to the fishery and to the subject. There are a few more images from that day that should be painted in the future. I am quite happy with the minimal palette, the flow, and the shape of the leaves as they emerge from the throat of the eel pot.
The Swing Bridge / Bear Creek – SOLD
watercolor
15″ x 22″
It has been years since I was last turtle potting for snapping turtles. We usually went to some rather picturesque places like the Jersey Pine Barrens, or the Gun Powder River. Places with wooded shorelines and/or marshes replete with channels, grasses so tall you couldn’t see over the tops of them, or shorelines with houses back off the water in the trees.
I had heard that some watermen would go up into the waters off Baltimore Harbor. Places like Curtiss Bay, or the Patapsco River, or the Back River. Watermen I knew were headed up that way earlier this Spring. Oyster season was over, and the crabs were not showing up yet. Fishing wasn’t too bad. But I wanted to see what it would be like to go turtle potting in an urban industrial environment. What a shock it was for me who is used to the Eastern Shore’s rural farmland, wooded shoreline, and marshes. We went up creeks lined with every type of neighborhood from tract housing, trailer vacation projects, condos, apartments and in some places mega-mansions with their perfectly manicured lawns. In other places there were the industrial docks that the Baltimore waterfront is known for. Because they had been doing this for some time, these men knew what they were doing and where they were going to set their pots and then return the next day to fish them. It’s not called catching turtles for the very same reason it’s not called catching fish. You just plain do not know what is going to come up. You hope that you have set them in good places. That is part of the wonderment I still have with the fisheries. I went with them three times to see what and where they would fish. But I get ahead of myself. I had not been under so many types of bridges, some famous, some not so well known. In the case of these two paintings, it is the same bridge. The Swing Bridge on Bear Creek. There was/is something about the house-like structure at the top in which the bridge keeper used to work from to move the bridge allowing too tall boats to pass through. There is still the little boy in me who projects himself into such places to think how it would be to have to live up there and wonder at the sights I might see. As an artist I liked the many linear aspects of such a structure. Rust colored, silhouetted against the sky, weathered textures that speak of neglect and yet important enough to be still operational.
Four Bridges – SOLD
watercolor
22″ x 15″
This is the same swing bridge mentioned before but from a different angle. I made mention of having to pass under a large number of bridges in the earlier essay. In the background of this piece, you can see four bridges that had to be passed under to get to this one on Bear Creek. The area is so different for me that I ended up taking a lot of water level photos of the water under the bridges and the way the light would play underneath them. The scenery is so alien to me that I am still trying to come to terms about how to paint from the photos without getting into too much baggage about what we have done to this Bay and its tributaries. Might have to do that sometime.