While exploring the series "people and their boats", I came across this young woman scrambling over the sailboat Adventure, a tourist vessel stationed in Gloucester Harbor. As I watched her skillfully climbing over the decks it was clear that she had years of experience with boats, particularly this one. When she finally worked her way to the bow, where a voluminous bundle of canvas waited, she immediately went to work securing the foresail to the line that attaches from the bow to the first of two large masts. I liked the way this young woman worked with an air of authority. Needing more material, she grabbed the canvas and yanked the sail closer so she could continue clipping it to the line.

Making paintings that show people working on their boats allows me to capture their choreography in a setting that's still got some romance connected to it. To me it's similar to ballet, the way deck hands push and pull and tug and scamper and climb over a boat. Their actions speak without words. Their motion is the dance of work. All done amid the constructions that make up a vessel, with its uniquely beautiful forms and textures, all calling out to be capture on canvas.