The whippoorwill and my first sale
“To me, the most important thing is the sense of going on.”
As an artist working on Cape Cod, I often boast that I walk in the footsteps of the greats, including painters like Hawthorne and Bohm, poets like Thoreau and Kunitz, playwrights like Williams and O’Neill. Even the Outer Cape’s restaurant owners are sometimes renowned artists themselves, outside the kitchen at least. But one painter casts a longer shadow than the rest over my own work: Edward Hopper.
Hopper’s works, mostly of commonplace scenes and subjects, have a magical way of drawing in the viewer to grasp “the sense of going on.” I can’t recall exactly when or where I first encountered his intriguing, realistic paintings. Maybe it was at the 2007 Hopper exhibit shown at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts? Or perhaps my first awareness of Hopper came with the 2014 news that his paintings of Cape Cod had been hung in the Oval Office at The White House. Regardless, during the pandemic lockdowns of the early 2020s, Hopper’s Great Depression scenes of alienation, loneliness, and abandonment were never more relevant to the times.
Edward Hopper. Cape Cod Evening. 1939
Only in the past year have I realized the extent of Hopper’s possible influence on my own style. Consider Cape Cod Evening, displayed in that Boston exhibit in 2007. With its interplay of light and life, Hopper has created quite a melancholy scene. Are the folks huddling in the distance experiencing some kind of trouble? And what has pulled the dog’s attention away from its owners?
A recently discovered clue may point to some of “the going on.” According to the National Gallery of Art’s website, the painting was originally to have been titled “Whippoorwill,” after the nocturnal bird known for its distinctive song familiar to all Cape Codders. Perhaps the dog, with its tail extended, ears stiff, and head turned, is watching and listening to some nearby birds.
Greg Ayres. Wharf Light. 2021
Now compare this scene with my mixed-media photograph, Wharf Light, completed and sold in 2021; in fact, it was my first piece to sell in the gallery. Admittedly, I did not intend to borrow from Hopper, nor to create a melancholy scene, but the parallels are many: the Cape Cod evening setting, the light, the sense of abandonment, that dog.
A flock of birds breaks the stillness with a sense of movement. Is this dog, like the one in Cape Cod Evening, focused on some birds?
I think the answers are best left to the viewer, but I can say that I love the way dogs, birds, and other animals bring life and movement to my scenes. And although I have been slow to name his influence, I would like to thank Edward Hopper for inspiring artists like me.
