Floating (Lake George) – 2011 – Hybrid on Paper – 19″H x 30″W   Private Collection

In late fall 2009 I paddled with a friend to the Narrows of Lake George on an amazingly calm day. As I looked north from the area of 14 Mile Island, the islands seemed to be floating on that flat surface where the abstract patterns of the reflections of the sky competed for attention.

I had been interested in exploring that area for my long-running project of locating places from which John Frederick Kensett had painted in 1853. I had my suspicions that an unlocated painting in his estate sale (pictured below) was painted from 14 Mile Island, and what I saw that day, with actual alignments of the islands with Black Mountain, confirmed my suspicions.

John Frederick Kensett, Entrance to the Narrows, c1853, 14 1/4 x 22 1/4 (#78 in estate sale)

Below is a collage of two photographs from the day, created with DualAlign software. It became the base layer for adding and subtracting details in Floating.

I had painted a watercolor of the wide expanse from 14 Mile Island  in the 1990’s, and it became one of the layers in Floating.

Below is the print that I painted on to create the final image:

And the final hybrid (the coloring of the image here is a bit too pink and will be replaced)