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Bamboozled by lobster traps

Detail from my current unfinished painting.
When I go silent about my own work, that means Iā€™m involved in a big mess. My process, as it were, is that I show up in my studio every day at the same time expecting a miracle. More often than not, they happen. But at times nothing works. My painting looks and feels mechanical and rusty. 
This is not to say that I donā€™t know what Iā€™m doingā€”I haven’t forgotten how to paint. But between the technical and the transcendent, there is slippage that nobody can define. Thatā€™s not unique to painting; itā€™s true of music and (I suspect) a host of other creative endeavors. We sometimes call these things ā€˜happy accidents,ā€™ but they are more than that. Theyā€™re as if the whole universe suddenly slides into place, right there in that tiny rectangle in front of you.
Occasionally, the opposite happens. Nothing comes together. I tap, tap, tap on the frozen parts while nothing moves and I get more aggravated. Those are the weeks I wish Iā€™d taken up something fun, like dentistry.
Monhegan lobster traps, waiting to trip up the unwary painter.
Whatā€™s got me flummoxed this week is an old nemesis: the lobster trap.  A modern lobster trap looks like a plastic-coated Havahart (Ā®) trap, for you inland dwellers. It operates on the same principle: a lobster unthinkingly (because thatā€™s how lobsters do) crawls up a funnel and gets stuck in the main room. I know how big lobster traps are, what colors they come in, whatā€™s inside them, and how they reflect light. But I donā€™t seem to be able to paint them convincingly. Whatā€™s heartening is that I donā€™t much like how anyone else paints them, either.
If only Maine lobstermen would use creel-style pots like they do in Scotland! These are rounded, more solid and poetical. But Iā€™m an American, and my paintings ought to be grounded in what is real for my time and place. Darn it.
I never finished this sketch of lobster traps at Port Clyde, but it’s on my schedule.
When Iā€™m stuck on something, I revert to first principles. Get closer, look more carefully, and draw, draw, draw. Iā€™ve asked for the loan of a trap, and Iā€™m going to set it up in my studio and study it. (Iā€™d rather not do that in the blowing snow, thanks.) I hope that I have some sort of epiphany that informs my work going into next summer.
This is the lad who really owned that lobster boat, but I never took a photo of him while I was painting him.
Iā€™m finishing a painting I started years ago, of Eastportā€™s lobster fleet. I worked on this for days on the public landing, but it wasnā€™t finished before I had to leave. The tooth on the canvas is much rougher than I use today. Itā€™s kind of nice, but the adjustment is hard.
Because I took very few photos, Iā€™m forced to make a lot of stuff up. Part of me is certain that a someone will look at this painting and say, ā€œthat boat would never have that standing shelter!ā€
Sadly, I had to lose the figure of the young man who owned the closest boat. He was just too large in my plein air rendering. Since I had no photos of him on his boat, heā€™s been replaced by a Gloucester fisherman. Iā€™m not sure if that should even be legal.

Meanwhile, Iā€™ll be back tomorrow to tap, tap, tap some more. Eventually it will all fall together. It always does.