Jetties at Bellport 1912

William James Glackens made this painting of Jetties at Bellport with oil paint on canvas. I love the way Glackens has captured the light in this scene. It feels like a hazy, lazy summer day at the beach. You can imagine the artist standing there, squinting in the sun, trying to capture the scene before him. I bet he was thinking about other impressionist painters like Renoir and Monet, but also pushing their ideas to his own ends. Notice the way he's used these broken strokes of color to build up the forms. It's almost like he's sculpting with paint. That water, for instance, feels thick and viscous, not just something to look at, but something you could reach out and touch. And the figures—they're not sharply defined, but they feel alive, caught in motion. It reminds me that painting is like an act of remembering. In the studio, artists channel their emotions to revisit a past moment, making it new. Glackens is in conversation with the past, and, in turn, he inspires us artists of the present.