Painting Cape Ann Coastal Scenes
The Blue Dragon, 30 x 24 oil painting by Melody Phaneuf, 2014
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Cape Ann’s coastal landscape and spectacular light has long captivated artists. I am delighted to join them in a long lineage of aesthetic history.
The surrounding coastal waterways lend themselves to serene compositional arrangements, and offer beautiful color combinations that delight the eye and sooth the spirit. Ever changing seasonal variation gives an artist endless opportunity to design, and myriad palettes to explore.
I am inspired by many of the Artists who worked here, and lately by the work of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow was a noted Ipswich artist, who was intrigued by Japanese prints. He freely incorporated the designs from these prints as he painted his environment, simplifying and making adjustments to what he viewed in Nature in order to create his visual poetry.
Dow referred to the marshes as the blue dragon. It seems a fitting label for the undulating quality of line displayed by these waterways. His concept drew me to look at the marshes anew, and to give the line all the energy of a dragon, flying through the skies.
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