Sunsets, Seascapes — watercolor painting by Ray Patrick
The underside of a pier at sunset, seen from the sand looking up and along, with a lit lamp standing against the sky and the pilings receding into shadow.
The deck cuts the picture corner to corner on a steep diagonal and everything hangs from it. The lamp sits at the apex, the one point of light, and the pilings beneath make a rhythm that shortens as it recedes.
Teal and cobalt in the upper sky dropping to cadmium yellow and amber at the horizon. The pier is a near-black aubergine; the lamp a small disc of warm yellow.
The sky is laid in broad transparent passes with hard edges where one dried before the next. The pier goes on as a single dark wash and its structure is drawn into it wet, so the pilings bleed slightly at their feet.
Watercolour on paper, 5 × 7 in. — the Fabriano block's label is legible in the photograph. Transparent throughout, the lit sky left as bare paper.
No signature visible within the painted area.