Chilmark Morning

Spring 2000

A sacred place.
On a great measure of bluff overlooking Squibnocket Point
there is a century old chicken coop become camp cabin.
Outside, the seagulls rise on the warming October air and cry out over the persistent sound of the ocean swells. The rusts and siennas and golds of the late season meadow are accented with tiny red specks of newly opened bittersweet. There are long shadows and down along the stone wall the deer have settled into their beds of bracken and cattails hidden behind the grapevines.
I have spent a hundred evenings on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.
Familiar with the darkening shapes of rabbits coming out to find their supper of greens, beacons from the West Chop light house signaling on the horizon, the milky way preparing for its spectacle, and the magic of sparks arcing into the night wind as the logs are emptied from the too smoky fireplace.
Inside on this evening with lobster pots and wine glasses stacked in the porcelain kitchen sink, the dog walked one last time and the candles gently blown out, we retire to our cubby hole of a bed.
When the last light of the reading lamp goes out there is an indigo blackness, a ghostly breeze lifting the curtain from the sliding window, and a stillness broken only by the rhythm of the waves.

Camp Sunrise.
So named almost a century ago by Grandma Sophie for the spectacular sunrises which grace this edge of the
planet. It is humbling to stand on that bluff, with the Atlantic ocean before you,
and all of the continent behind and watch the sun break over the horizon.
I confess to having witnessed more sunsets than sunrises
and I covet the cool crisp sheets of the morning.

It was on one of those island mornings that I awoke in the tiny cabin bedroom to a mysterious light.
The center of my waking world was awash in firelight.
The door alongside the bed was opened to the bathroom.
Herself had placed a small candle in the sink while I slept.

(Now, the interior of this cabin is painted white at the beginning of the season every other year or so. There
have been great Nor’easters weathered there when, huddled under the thick wool blankets against the storm,
I believed that those thick
layers of paint were all that was holding the walls and roof together.)

The orange light of that morning’s candle was alive and dancing across that whitewashed wood.
The brilliant blue square of the bathroom window had long been a subject in waiting and
I had done sketches and taken photographs for a decade in anticipation of capturing that scene.
But it wasn’t until that moment, when the echo of her spirit was reflected in the worn surfaces of the
porcelain and wood, that I found the way in to the heart of this painting.

The advice to writers is to write of what you know.
I believe that is true for artists.
I paint the Vineyard to testify and to claim and to hold tight to that sacred piece of the planet.
Because I have been there,
and I know what it feels like to drown.