Atkins Point, Northern Shore

This painting came out of an amalgam of visits to three great friends in the Maritimes: the artist Alex Livingston, the poet James Warner and the curator/artist Gordon Laurin, in Nova Scotia on the Northern Shore outside Halifax. I miss them and our trips together, so I painted us playing cards all cosy at Atkins Point. I found myself taking things out of the painting, skumbling the paint as flat as possible with little brushes. Milton Avery and Marsden Hartley were whispering in my ears in the studio as I painted it and in the end the Christmas tree, all lit up like a Roman candle, got painted out. - TH