Ten Foot Island by davis W. Morton

TEN FOOT ISLAND / 2000 / oil on canvas / 12" x 21"  SOLD... Read a painting comment below...

      Ten Foot Island, on the Potomac River, is about two miles northwest of Violets Lock in Potomac, Maryland. Because the vegetation is so thick, this is the only island on the river, east of Pinto, Maryland, where I haven't found a place to land my boat.
     Long before the river, when I had my horse, I used to go exploring in the woods. At the end of a day, the image that stayed with me was always the indication of a trail I had never been down or a hill I had never been over. Today, I explore rivers in my kayak. I go up and down a river from its end toward its beginning, until the water is so shallow I have to walk and drag my boat. Now when the sun goes down, it's the image of the last bend I was paddling toward that I take home.
     In my paintings I do want to say something about nature’s beauty, but for me the heart of that beauty has always been the unknown mystery of it all. So when viewers look at my paintings, I don’t want them to say, “Isn’t that pretty?” I want the need to go exploring to be irresistible. I want them to be looking for a place to land.