Mohegan Harbor 1997

Frank Mason made this painting, Mohegan Harbor, with oil paint. It’s full of blues and greens, churned together, and a sense of energy that almost makes me seasick. Imagine Mason at his easel, wrestling with the waves, the sky, and the rocks. The paint is applied in thick strokes. Check out the way the brush loaded with white paint crashes onto the surface, becoming the wave's foam. I wonder, was he trying to capture the sea's raw power or its quiet beauty? Maybe both? This piece has me thinking about other artists who tried to paint the sea: Turner with his swirling vortexes, or Courbet with his bleak, gray visions of the Normandy coast. It's like artists through time are all having a conversation about how to capture this thing, the ocean, that’s so wild. We can never really pin it down, but it sure is fun trying.