Fieldwork Week Five: Pier

    Thanks for the photo, Ryan!!   This week’s session took our hearty group of 10 adventurers to the Wellfleet pier.    I sometimes get asked to go places to paint — say California —or it’s suggested that I take a class to the South of France on a painting excursion. Both of those things feel very unnatural to me. My work arises from immersion and familiarity. And my best paintings always come from profound experience within the everyday.    Wellfleet is hardly an unknown, yet I’m finding it to be a challenge to just park myself and draw during our fieldwork sessions. I’m not organically inclined to draw in town or at the pier, but I’m trying my best to understand these places as a motif in my work. I know from experience that means I need to immerse myself.   What does immersion mean? I suppose foremost I’m trying to cultivate a deep familiarity with the space, form and light of the place. I want the feeling of the place to be in my body. Even more, I’m trying to see it in a way that feels true to me and that doesn’t reproduce other views created by other artist over time. Through immersion I’d like to reflect the place back in a fresh, exciting way.    I made six drawings in the 90-minutes we were drawing together. Two of them have promise as ideas for potential paintings. But clearly more work is needed.       One of my drawings from the afternoon.   …   Fieldwork Saturdays in Wellfleet: Organized by Pete Hocking & AMZehnder Gallery   This summer, we’re inviting creative people — including visual artists, photographers, writers, and others — to join us for community fieldwork sessions in Wellfleet on Saturday afternoons from 2:30 – 5 PM. This is not a workshop and there will be no instructor. Spending time in a place, looking deeply, taking notes, and allowing the place to soak into memory allows one to bring meaningful experience into the studio — and to ultimately work more intuitively.  The sessions are also designed to strike up conversation and relationships among Outer Cape artists. You’re invited to look, to draw, to paint, to photograph, to take notes, to write — and especially to connect with other creative people in our incredible community. These sessions are free and you’re welcome to join us as your schedule permits. Come for one session or all sessions!    We’ll meet at AMZehnder Gallery at 25 Bank Street at 2:30 PM on Saturday and we’ll conclude the start of Gallery Night at 5 PM.    Questions? Contact phocking@gmail.com