Bay Rider

Giclee Print on Canvas
Edition of 300 S/N
Image: 24″ x 30″
$350

I saw this wonderful whirligig/weathervane for the first time many years ago and I knew that someday I would use it in a painting. As with many of my paintings using folk art as subject matter, I originally planned to paint it  with a simple background, on a shelf or against a wall of a barn or old house. While visiting a friend whose home is right on the Chesapeake Bay near Easton, Maryland I got the idea to use his panoramic view of the Bay and several distant points of land as the background. While I was photographing the scene there were Canada Geese everywhere, which gave me the idea to include a flock or two in the composition.

The “Uncle Sam” weathervane is quite famous. It was found in upstate New York, near the Canadian border, and was crafted by a very talented but unknown artist sometime around 1900. It currently resides in the American Museum of Folk Art in New York and has been pictured in many books and articles on classic folk art. Since I painted it from a series of my own photos I used a lot of artistic license, adding a lot of color that may have been there at one time but is now faded, and changing the shape a bit, notably Sam’s uplifted arm, as he “leads” the geese across the Bay.