American Art Collaborative

Alex Katz has been painting Maine subjects since 1949, when he spent his first of two summers at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. This depiction of a canoe on a field of blue is among his most archetypal Maine works. To achieve it Katz painted numerous studies, refining his representation of light and its reflections, and resolving questions of scale. Such planning allowed for what he has described as “great control. The bottom line of the canoe might be the best-controlled long line that I had painted.” Katz also noted that he “loved painting the fake birchbark,” a reference to the simulated birchbark on the canoe that he still uses on a pond in Lincolnville, Maine.