Moonrise, Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 14 February 2025, oil on canvas board, 25 X 20 cm
This is from last month because I haven't been working out at the beach for a long time. The cyclone that roared through three weeks ago was a distraction and it ripped the sand dunes apart so I have been working at home. Whew.... lots of rain ever since has also altered my schedule.
But hey! Gotta stay productive as Uncle Morris in the Bronx always said.
This small study (above) is a curious thing because I don't usually go near a full moon. It's because it can come out looking tacky and basically sort of dumb or sentimental. Generally I don't even attempt painting it because it has already been done with great care by so many competent painters.
But I like the idea of a full moon painting if it's done with a personnel touch, not the Claude Lorraine kinds of knockoffs, but by the dark horses of Art history like Whistler and Albert Pinkham Ryder, two of my favourite painters.
Albert Pinkham Ryder, 1890, The Philips Collection, Washington D.C.
I have always loved this picture made somewhere on the Massachusetts coastline. He was the most prolific of all painters in this genre of 'the full moon' in American history. There are dozens of versions in various museums around the country.
He made something lugubriously original out of a simple full moon magically rising up over the sea. This is a fantastic image and beautifully crafted.
He was an odd recluse (like me!), but far more talented. But what the heck, I can still put my work up anyway. Normally I normally evade Moonrises because they kill the 'Bloom' of colour that I need for my own point of interest when I get out to the beach.
But in this small study of mine, I had somehow forgotten that the full moon was scheduled to arise when I went to work that afternoon. I usually check the app on my phone that spells out the moon phases but I forgot to check. Fortunately, as seen in my small study, it was cloudy, and the moon barely shone through the mass of clouds over the horizon so like they say, fake it if you can.
Anyway, I sort of liked it until I posted it too closely to Ryder's sublime painting situated below it. Yick,,, is all I can say about it now.
