Disrupting a wide expanse of pale sand and gentle water, a dark porch beam bisects the still, isolated Cape Cod shore. Dickinson painted this and other landscape compositions outdoors and directly from nature, often completing his paintings in one sitting of three or four hours. His approach, he said, was "to make your decisions pretty fast. . . if the painting was not satisfactory at the end of a sitting, it was wiped out." Working quickly, Dickinson subordinated fine detail to an effect more like an impression of the landscape. The result is a somewhat abstract composition.
Gallery label from American Modern: Hopper to O'Keeffe, August 17, 2013–January 26, 2014.
