Working on Water

Painting water can be frustrating. After all, water doesn't really have a color unless it's carrying sediment or dissolved matter. Water is transparent, so it seems to me that a painter should portray what happens to the light that reflects or passes through, gets bent and so on. The other problem with water is that when it is in motion the surfaces break into faceted planes and peaks and it doesn't stand still. Rivers and oceans are moving bodies of water that change in a heartbeat.

Hoff, "Streambed," oil on panel, 2017

For the plein air painter it may be enough to simply paint what's there, but most painters look for ways to spice up the image, enhance visual interest, give the viewer pleasant opportunities. Sometimes an outdoor work comes together, as happened with "Streambed." I was painting on the bank of a creek and thought that the way the water rushed over the rocks on the bottom provided interesting opportunities to study edges and colors as well as chances to indicate the path of the water. Since the creek was flowing clear and shallow that summer morning, only the distortions of the rocks and flow mattered. Of course I'm not always that lucky.

Hoff, "Night Shore," oil on panel, 2017

Painting the ocean is a different problem altogether. Artists from at least the mid-19th century have made any number of paintings of beaches and shorelines, waves breaking on rocks and so on. In "Night Shore" an adapted copy, my interest was mostly focused on the waves breaking onshore, but also the night colors of the sea and sky made this fun to work out.

Hoff, "Raccoon River, March," oil on panel, 2020

One of the difficulties we face in painting water is how to simplify the image yet keep the sense of liquid motion. Certainly the riot of greens in spring and summer can be distracting. But in March the trees are dun-grey, reddish, sometimes bright,but without the infinity of green. And the bright sky can reflect even more from a sweet-flowing stream. I painted "Raccoon River, March" entirely on the spot, taking in the sere colors of grasses, last years leaves and the dark tree trunks. In this particular case spring rains and thaw had swelled and smoothed the flow of water, leaving wide flat swathes to reflect the bright blue sky.

One of my plans for the coming months is to do considerably more paintings of water in all its maddening variety.