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Painting Canada - Hit or Miss
Hit or Miss
painting with Sierra
Cape Breton Highlands National Park had been in my mind for weeks before our arrival. The rugged coast and mountainous terrain beckoned me to paint them. Our arrival on a sunny afternoon had me sure that this place would be all that I hoped it would be. We set up our camp and explored a bit, and then retired for the evening.
The next morning dawned wet and cold. No matter, I thought and set out anyway. As the rain intensified, I began to look for locations where I could paint under the hatch of my van. After an hour of searching, I finally settled on working next to a fish plant where I could park and paint protected from the deluge that was now pouring out of the sky.
As I set up my palette, I watched the fishermen coming in and out of the small harbour. Thinking myself akin to them, I could identify - especially today- with a life of hit or miss, and being dependant on the forces of nature. I continued to ponder the similarities between the fishermen and myself while I painted for a good part of the morning. Boats began to fill the harbor as the morning’s catch was brought in. The once quiet dock became a bustle of activity, with trucks backing in and out, forklifts loading and unloading and hordes of gulls feeding on the bits and pieces leftover. Gull droppings interspersed the rains. Occasionally they landed with an annoying splat! onto the hatch of the van and the wharf around me, sometimes dangerously close. The painting hadn’t been going particularly well, and I began to become distracted by the activity, not to mention the fishermen who began to notice me and watch over my shoulder. Some came back several times to check my progress. As the piece got worse and worse, I began to ignore it and spent more time talking to the fishermen. I decided to try my theory about how similar we were.
“Painting is like fishing,” I said, “Some days you get something, some days you don’t.” The fishermen hadn’t been very talkative, but one smiled and spoke up.
“Fishin’ ain’t like dat. We got quotas an’ seasons, minimum grading an’ such, a feller’s pretty much guaranteed to do all right, y’know.”
So much for my feelings of kinship. I turned back to the painting, which was certainly lacking something – but what? It must have been obvious that I was perplexed, for the fisherman pitched in again.
“Where’s your center of interest?” He asked, sounding like an art teacher. I was at a loss for an answer, because my painting was obviously missing one. The gulls began to wheel above the van. Suddenly one released his cargo directly above me, it found it’s way under the hatch, and landed with a disgusting splash right onto the painting and easel before me. The fishermen chuckled behind me.
“There it is.” I said, wiping my brushes and easel clean with a rag. I began to pack up, defeated. The fishermen began to lose interest and left as well. The gulls however, remained, and joyously rained their acrid droppings around me as I left the wharf.
Sometimes you have to know when to admit defeat.
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