plein air

“West Basin Fog”, this is a small painting, 6″ x 8″, oil on canvas panel. $550.00 USD

Luckily there were no 15 to 30 mph winds today as there seemingly have been for the last few weeks. However, it absolutely poured rain. All day. Just before sunset, the radar showed it was gone. In its place was a wicked thick fog. Again. Even though the skies still looked like rain, I ventured out. I soon found myself headed back to Lobsterville and the West Basin in Aquinnah. I had no plan in mind, except that maybe I would catch dinner when finished painting. After circling around Captain Buddy Vanderhoop and his charter fishing boat, Tomahawk, on its trailer in the end parking lot, having some out of water work done to it, I backed into the visitor lot. I set up under my opened lift-gate, just in case the radar was wrong, at least I would have half my gear under cover. As it got gloomier with more fog shifting about, I could hear Captain Buddy maneuvering his rig into the launch shoot. As I, too, finished my task, I came to realize how wet it was on everything outside my van. Even my glasses had fogged up. I was lucky to see enough to paint. Driving back, I stopped by the 1st parking lot to fish, only to find 20 other fishermen already in place, waders on, slicker hoods up, casting into the gloaming. I soon enough joined them and slipped into their picket line of moving rods. I worked the water for an hour with a few hits on each of my 2 favorite lures, but they were all very small striped bass, schoolies as we call them. It was a nice cocoon like feeling standing 20 feet out in water up to my thighs. Surrounded by fog and near darkness, I could barely see the comrades on either side even when one had to switch on his headlamp to untangle his line or unhook a small fish. The rhythm of the undulating water was in itself mesmerizing in the muffled night. Slowly, the line thinned as each and every fisher-person realized we had been fooled, there were no big ones out there tonight.…