There’s an old saying that you may have heard. “Give a monkey a typewriter and eventually it’ll type a sentence.” I think that may apply here. I’ve been a photographer forever, not one of those professionals who knows every nuance about exposures, ASA’s, light refractions and reflections and the like, I’m a guy who takes pictures. I use those photographs as inspiration and guidance for my paintings. I suppose, upon reflection, it’s probably more accurate to say I’m a guy who takes pictures.
It was early December 2011. My friend Greig Soohen had invited me to spend a day at his family cottage on Sakinaw Lake. I jumped at the chance. I’d long told him that I felt there was a painting somewhere there on the lake calling to me. Joy and I had paddled Sakinaw the year before and I could feel the beck and call. It was a glorious winter day. The sun even had some warmth to it. To get to Greig’s cottage requires a short boat ride of no more than four minutes, but once you’re there you are in seclusion. We spent the day wandering the property both up in the forest and at the placid shore of Sakinaw Lake. We had a great lunch in the cottage and just let the day come over us with the serenity that only such places can provide.
I was ever on alert though. I knew there was a painting calling but I couldn’t put a fix on just where it was calling from. During the day I’d spent time on the rocks above the lake and I’d stood on the dock searching for what I knew was there. Even as we left the cottage for the day I knew the waiting image was still calling but I couldn’t put a fix on it. We were only a couple of hundred meters from Greig’s dock when the image that had been calling came into focus. It was almost four in the afternoon; already the sun was dropping behind the hills at the south end of the lake. The far shore of the lake was in virtual darkness but there in the ink black reflection of the hillside was a small island vibrant in the bright light of the setting sun.
“Stop the boat.” I called to Greig, and as the gentle rolling wake moved across the black, glassy water I took that once in a lifetime photograph. An alternate title for this painting is “Implausible” simply because the image doesn’t compute in the mind. How can the island be so bright surrounded by such darkness?
In creating the painting from that photograph I’ve come to realize something else. There’s only one artist who can truly do that unbelievable image justice, and that artist isn’t me. It’s my best, my one and only attempt, but surely the guy in charge of lighting on that day on Sakinaw Lake was the true master. Me? I’m just like that monkey who eventually wrote a sentence. I’ve taken enough photographs in my day; I guess it inevitably had to happen. Just like the proverbial monkey who was eventually able to type something meaningful, this once in a lifetime photograph is truly my “sentence”.