This is a painting that I created in 2006 depicting County Street in Ipswich, Massachusetts. It is an interpretation of a photo I took while on one of my many walks around Ipswich’s eastern neighborhood. I painted this image as an exercise of distillation, to strip away the little details to get to the atmosphere of the scene. So, this is not just a painting, not just an image. Rather, it is a window into place, and feeling.
The original photo:
Seeing this scene during a walk in June 2005 - the layout of the street, the houses, the trees, the colors of the houses, it all just looked right for a photo. It looked quaint and looked representative of Ipswich in one straight line of street. There was a blue sky, there was direct overhead sunlight. The moment was correct.
In painting this scene, I wanted to emphasize the colors and the shapes, the direction of lighting, the areas of light and dark, the balance of structure and trees and flowers. I removed as many details as possible so that only the essence of the image remained. I removed the power lines, telephone poles, the signs, the trash bins, and even details of window structure. I wanted to emphasize form and color as depicted by light in that moment. I wanted to capture the time of year, the fact that there were flowers in bloom, that the trees had leaves. This was early summertime, not stark winter.
County Street is a microcosm of Ipswich. The many historic homes sprinkled throughout Ipswich are represented here on County Street and like elsewhere, they are painted in tones of the Ipswich palette. There is a density to Ipswich's neighborhoods and town center and that density, that compactness, lends a sense of immersion where families, homeowners, and renters are within close distance of each other, yielding a concentration of community. It makes for a magical sense of space and atmosphere.