Status of Original Painting – Private Collection

Size: 10 x 15 inches

Medium: Watercolour on 300 lb d’Arches

Description:
This is not a Newfoundland scene – it’s the Point Lonsdale Lighthouse which overlooks the narrow entrance to Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne, Australia. That entrance is also called “The Rip”: it’s where calm waters of the bay meet turbulent waters of Bass Strait, resulting in notoriously dangerous currents that have shipwrecked many over the decades.

We spent about six weeks in Australia earlier this year, and four of those weeks were with mentor and friend Jack Martin and colleagues at the St. Vincent’s Institute in Melbourne. (Hi, Natalie! Hi, Ingrid!)

The town of Point Lonsdale is Jack’s favorite summer place, and he took us there for a lovely weekend. It had rained overnight and into the morning, just before this walk on the beach – which explains the title I’ve given the painting. The storm clouds were moving away quickly when I stood on the Pier and looked back at the Lighthouse to take the reference photos. It stood out in my mind as something that I simply had to paint.

This week, while painting the scene, I suddenly recalled Jack’s remark from months ago that I needn’t bother to do a painting of the Lighthouse because every artist who’s been to Point Lonsdale has done exactly that. Oh, well. I couldn’t resist the colors of and beauty of this scene, and I do like lighthouses. I may be the first artist from Newfoundland to have painted this Lighthouse; hopefully I’ve given this overdone scene a unique perspective and my characteristic touch. (…And Jack has emailed to reassure me that yes, I have done just that, and the painting really was worth doing.)