No barriers

You know how modern life is so restricted? “No Trespassing”; ‘Keep Out”; “Do Not Enter”. It’s the fortress mentality everywhere you go: electronic gates, high fences, security cameras, insurance regulations. Where’s a painter gonna paint?

But yesterday I found a refreshing exception. I went to the South Park community of Seattle with other plein air painters from Northwest Watercolor Society. South Park is an older residential neighborhood right next to the rust belt industrial zone of the Duwamish Waterway. There are bridges, cranes, marinas, old barges, aging hulks, tugboats. Everything a painter wants, but most of it is locked up behind chain-link security.

As it happened, I stumbled into a boatyard of sorts. In a two block area, boats were parked chockablock together with all kinds of marine debris in between. It was completely open. No fences, no barriers — a painter’s paradise. It’s too good to be true, I thought. I’ll probably be kicked out as soon as they find me.

I poked my head into the dark interior of a sheet metal shed and found two weatherbeaten characters sipping coffee amid a bewildering assortment of cables, wrenches, cutting torches, welding helmets, and oversize clamps. One of these yard birds had a beard down to his belly button. The other wore a pair of comically wide shorts. I said timidly, “I’m a watercolor painter. Do you think it would be all right if I made a watercolor painting of your boats?”

Mr. Longbeard chuckled and said, “You can paint your picture anywhere you want. Just don’t let the forklift run over you.”

As I backed out of their den, I realized that these fellows probably have a steady stream of painters coming through their rusting paradise, and I was just one more. What a breath of fresh air! I set up my easel and tackled my subject, a neglected old wooden boat with a tarp over it. I thought to myself, if this isn’t a plein air painter’s heaven, I don’t know what is.