Breaking Waves in the Fog
12“ x 16″, Oil on Panel, 2021
by Charles C. Clear III
Breaking Waves in the Fog is a recent painting that features waves emerging from the fog and breaking against a rocky shoreline in Narragansett, Rhode Island.
I chose this subject as a practice study in subtle tones and values. The colors – especially those in the fog – are so muted that they’re barely visible….and yet to me they’re so distinct. In the fog I see yellows, pinks, purples, and greens in the field of white and gray. Are these colors actually there or is the act of observing changing the observed? I don’t know. In the end I guess it doesn’t matter because whatever you decide to paint is what is – at least in the painting.
While I have painted in a fog many times…<cough cough>…this was only the third time that I had painted a foggy seascape. The other two times that I painted a foggy scene I was painting en plein air – or outdoors. Those paintings yielded mixed results. In the first, I was at a Public Access Point to the Waterfront off of Newton Avenue in Narragansett. On that day the fog lifted rapidly and changed the whole view before my very eyes. I thought that I would have an hour or more to paint but instead I was forced to finish that painting in a matter of minutes. In the second, I was painting on East Matunuck State Beach in the late afternoon and the fog thickened to the point where painting was no longer tenable and I was forced to stop.
For this painting I wanted to take my time in the Studio and see what was possible. It’s a quiet, understated painting, and yet it it perfectly captures the mood by the sea.
Contact me to purchase this original painting, or art prints of the work.
Charles C. Clear III
cc@oceanstateart.com