The Depth of the Moment

Red Pail
40 x 30

Children at play are every bit as serious and focused as artists at work.  Their games are intense, meaningful and thrilling, a fact that you can see in their eloquent gestures.
This little boy was, as always, a blurry figure off in the distance in one of my beach photos.  There was something pensive in his stance that looked as if he were pondering deeper things than the rest of us.  What he did next would not be frivolous fun, though it might look that way to casual observers.  He was planning serious pursuits.
I wanted to capture that moment of thought, and to give a sense of the timelessness of children's play.  I found it easiest to do this by taking him out of a believable landscape and creating a world of light, color and energy around him; a heightened reality that suggested water, sand and sky, but wasn't tied to these specifics. By merging his figure with this environment, I hoped to amplify the pensive gesture that drew me to paint him in the first place.
That sounds pretty cerebral but it was just the opposite while I was actually painting.  My method was to work instinctively in color and light, eliminating boundaries between the subject and his surroundings, and weaving the work together to create a moment.  If I got it right, this moment feels deep and rich, like the child's thoughts.
Happy painting!