BICYCLE

Portland Delivery, oil & pencil on linen, 9 x 12, 2009

Bicycle is the theme today at Illustration Friday. I have only once painted a bicycle, and here it is! It's very uncharacteristic in style as well as in execution. I was so worried about depicting the bicycle accurately that I traced it carefully in pencil onto the primed canvas before "coloring it in", not at all my usual slap-happy style!

I had been showing at a gallery in Portland Maine (Susan Maasch Fine Art) and was dropping off some work one late afternoon when I saw this bicycle delivery guy sailing slowly past on his red bike. There was something about the light and the balanced motion of the scene that caught at my heart. I happened to have my camera in hand and click: almost unbelieveably I managed to catch the moment. I don't usually work from photos, depict action, work from tracing or even do any drawing at all before painting, but I did this time and was somewhat pleased with the result. Something to revisit in future perhaps.

I felt later, looking at the scene that it had a faint whiff of Christen Købke about it, which must have unconsciously caused the initial attraction. I have had a postcard of this painting on my studio wall for years.