painting and text by Colin Page

I painted this recently from a photo. I found this spot as I walked up to paint a street scene in Maine with my friend Anne Blair Brown. We were painting around Boothbay Harbor with a group of her friends from the Plein Air Painters of the Southeast. I didn’t do my best work on location that day. The scene I painted on site was a bit more predictable; a winding street heading past some old white houses and ending at the harbor. Looking through my photos from that day I was much more excited by this truck in a gravel driveway, and a yard full of lobster traps and other junk. This is exactly what I think of when I hear someone mention a dooryard. “Dooryard” is a term I’d never heard before moving to Maine. It’s really just the yard around the front door, but most people who use it are describing a yard like the one in this painting. There should be piles of lobster traps and blue tarps scattered around, a couple of vehicles, and tall grass creeping in among the objects. This yard had a great feel to it, and was also lit beautifully, which made me want to paint it even more.