Ashburton Head is the site of the most famous shipwreck on Grand Manan Island.  The brig The Lord Ashburton, was smashed on the rocks at the foot of Eel Brook Point, just to the south of the head where all twenty-one of its crew perished.  Probably one of the most famous natural sculptures, The Bishop, stands at the foot of Ashburton Head, almost as a sentinel and a testament to the men who gave up their lives to the sea.  I wanted to capture the timelessness of the place, the moods of nature that often color the high cliffs in blankets of fog or brilliant light.  The size of the sailboat on the horizon adds to the effect of scale.  The cliffs of Ashburton Head are almost four hundred feet from the surface of the water.

Arc of Clouds:  Sunrise over Brown’s Place
The first time I visited Grand Manan Island was in the summer of 2002 and I stayed at a cluster of cottages on the shore called Beach Front Cottages.  The land lady’s name was Tammy Brown.  She was kind, had a sense of humor and was one of many generations of her family that had settled on the island in the 19^th century.  One morning I went out on the porch of my cottage at sunrise, as I did quite often in search of a good picture, and saw this magnificent arc of clouds expanding behind Tammy’s house.  It was irresistible.  I had to paint it when I got home to Marietta, Georgia after our two-week stay on the island, though it took me about a year to begin painting.  This was actually the very first in the series of ten paintings I would create of Grand Manan Island.

Sunset over Castalia Marsh
Castalia Marsh was about half-way between Seal Cove, where I was staying at Beach Front Cottages, and North Head, where the ferry from the mainland landed a few times a day.  Each time I went into town, I passed Castalia Marsh, often stopping to admire the view, the reflections of light from its waters, the water fowl that stopped to feed at low tide.  The light that glowed from the green marsh grasses and the dramatic sky were a combination of my fascination with the marsh itself and a very dramatic sunset that I witnessed in another place, but they seemed to fit together perfectly in this “composition,” i.e. a combination of different locations to create one dramatic image of nature.

Early Morning Fog, Deep Cove
This scene was one that compelled me to return to this particular location on several occasions.  It was set quite a bit back from the main road on the southern end of the island.  I hiked there several times with the final goal being to end my little jaunt at a point known locally as Flock of Sheep.  It derives its name from the large white boulders that sit on the cliff just above the surf.  They resemble a bunch of sheep herded together in one place.  Apparently the boulders were deposited over the centuries, perhaps millennia, by the tides and the receding glaciers of the last ice age.  The dead tree was the most compelling element in the scene.  It still stands there today just as it did two years ago, though in my painting I almost doubled in size to create a more dramatic contrast.  Local residents of the island that saw the painting admired the authenticity of the severed tree head, noting that there are trees like that all over the island and commenting on how characteristic this phenomenon is on Grand Manan.

Creeping Fog, North Head
This cliff, Ashburton Head, was so sublime in its looming presence over the large boulders at its foot, its crags and crevices gleaming in the bright summer sun, juxtaposed against the deep, warm shadows, that I couldn’t resist painting it.  The scale was regal, the proportions majestic and the knowledge that The Bishop was around the other side of the cliff, was inspiring.  I added the creeping fog to give the picture and added dimension of mystery and timelessness.

Red Point Road at Sunset
This little painting is one of the most dramatic in the series of ten.  The hill and trees in the foreground were what I saw every day outside my cottage while looking southwestward toward the town of Seal Cove.  On this particular day, the clouds had been building up and becoming more and more opaque over the course of the day until finally at sunset, a small window of light opened up to reveal the glowing sky as the sun descended beneath the horizon.

Sunrise Along the Coast
Over the course of my two-week stay on the island, I would often leave the cottage just at about sunrise and would drive down to Southwest Head on which sat a lighthouse.  I often stopped at a cove, today called Harrington’s Cove, but to which the 19^th-century writers referred to as Hetherington’s Cove, to watch a fresh water stream meet the ocean, admire the rocks and on one particular occasion see the sun just above the horizon, bursting through the thick clouds in rays of light, as if God were peaking through to admire his handiwork.  That is the same sentiment with which I painted the painting.  It was a very spiritual experience for me and I wanted that experience to be forever preserved both in my memory and in my eyes.

Sunrise, Seal Cove
The silhouetted hill and evergreens exuded such a feeling of peace and serenity that I needed to combine that with a very dramatic sky.  I searched and searched one day frantically for a sunset that I knew was developing, but I had to follow the setting sun until I could get a good picture of it to use as a reference.  I finally got that picture and used it to create the sky in this extremely dramatic, primordial scene of what I often think of as what the end of the fifth day of creation must have looked like.

The Bishop was one of my primary motivations in visiting Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick.  I studied the work of an American nineteenth-century Romantic marine artist, named Alfred Thompson Bricher, and he returned to the island repeatedly over the course of three decades and painted and illustrated The Bishop more than any other artist of his time.  That fact and the just the character of this wrinkled, cracked stalwart testament to nature’s creativity, drew me powerfully to photograph and then paint this amazing rock.

Sunrise Over White Head, Bay of Fundy
White Head is a small sister island close to Grand Manan.  At low tide, if you are ambitious and a fast walker, you can actually walk to it.  Its harbor is grace by bleached white rocks along the shore and the other side of the island boasts a wonderful cove which is the home of a family of bald eagles, herring weirs and constantly rolling fog.  In this painting I wanted to capture the drama of the brilliant sunrise, almost giving the impression of a battle in the sky with the serene, undulating tide and the white cliffs from which the island derives its name.

Click here for Black & White Drawings of this series