Low Tide Rocks

Low Tide Rocks
a descriptive yet punny title, eh?

This painting will be on display and for sale in the exhibition Bruce McMillan's Coastal York with Georgia's Words at the York Hospital, York, ME, May 1 to August 31, 2025 featuring original watercolors of Bruce McMillan and excerpts from Georgia O'Keeffe's letters written from Long Sands Beach, York, ME in the 1920s when she visited alone to sketch and paint.

Located in York County painted March 23, 2025, 14" x 11" (w x h), using Daniel Smith, Schmincke Horadam, and Winsor & Newton watercolors, all selected for light fastness and permanence, and Uniball waterproof fade proof ink on 140 lbs. Fabriano Artistico cold press rough 100% cotton extra white watercolor paper, framed.
$600

Low Tide Rocks Art Essay

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Low Tide Rocks
How various artists
painted or sculpted this theme.
6 Americans, 1 Norwegian, and 1 Welsh sculptor

1
Low Tide, Isles of Shoals
Childe Hassam (1859-1935), American
Watercolor on paperboard, 14" x 20" (w x h), 1903
Christie's 2021 auction sold $47,500 USD

Source: Wiki:
Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes and instrumental in advancing Impressionism to American collectors, dealers, and museums. He produced over 3,000 paintings, oils, watercolors, etchings, and lithographs over the course of his career. He was an influential American artist of the early 20th century.
    During summers, he worked in the typically Impressionist location Appledore Island, the largest of the Isles of Shoals off New Hampshire, then famous for its artist colony. Social life on the island revolved around the salon of poet Celia Thaxter who hosted artists and literary figures. The group was a "jolly, refined, interesting and artistic set of people...like one large family." There Hassam recalled, "I spent some of my pleasantest summers...(and) where I met the best people in the country."
    Hassam's subjects for his paintings included Thaxter's flower garden, the rocky landscape, and some interior scenes rendered with his most impressionistic brush strokes to date. In Impressionist fashion, he applied his colors "perfectly clear out of the tube" to an unprimed canvas. Artists displayed their work in Thaxter's salon and were exposed to wealthy buyers staying on the island. Thaxter died in 1894, and in tribute Hassam painted her parlor in The Room of Flowers.

2
Bathing Women / Badende kvinner
Edvard Munch, (1863-1944), Norwegian
Watercolor, crayon, red on wove paper,
22" x 24" (w x h), circa 1935-1940
Munchmuseet, Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

Source: Wiki
Despite over half of his painted works being landscapes, Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is rarely seen as a landscape artist. However, Munch had a fixation on several elements of nature that resulted in recurrent motifs throughout his work. The shoreline and the forest are both significant settings of Munch's work.

3
Grand Granite Low Tide
Jill Hoy (1954- ), American
Oil on canvas 46" x 38" (w x h), American
$9,000, Portland Art Gallery, Portland, Maine

Source: Portland Gallery, edited:
Jill Hoy earned a B.F.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz and also attended the New York Academy of Art in New York City. She has a studio gallery in Stonington, Maine. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the country. Her use of vivid color in her Maine paintings results in surfaces that are rich and seem to vibrate. "I often work in the morning or late afternoon..." As a result, her paintings capture those specifics of time and light. Because she's been a regular resident of the Deer Isle area since 1965, much of her work can be seen as a document of places and time in the area.

4
Rocks, Low Tide
John Sloan (1871-1951), American
Oil on canvas, 20" x 24" (w x h), 1916
Property from the John Sloan Trust,
sold to Benefit the Delaware Art Museum
Christie's 2017 auction sold $20,000 USD
Private Collection

Source: Wiki
John French Sloan (1871-1951) was an American painter and etcher. He is considered to be one of the founders of the Ashcan school of American art. He was also a member of the group known as The Eight. Sloan's paintings are represented in almost all major American museums.

5
Rocks 2
Alex Katz (1927- ), American
Oil on linen, 100" x 96" (w x h), 2012
From the Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1 exhibition

Source: Wiki
Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally. He is well known for his large paintings, whose bold simplicity and heightened colors are considered as precursors to Pop Art. Alex Katz in Maine was published by the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine. His major collection resides at Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.

6
Deserted Beach
Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003), American
Oil on canvas board, 36" x 24" (w x h), 1975
Available at Greenwich Gallery, Greenwich, CT

Source: Wiki, edited
Sally Michel Avery (1902-2003) was artist and illustrator who painted abstracted figures, landscapes, and genre scenes, personal moments of everyday life. She was the co-creator of the Avery Style, wife and collaborator of her artist husband Milton Avery, and mother of their daughter artist March Avery, who also painted in the Avery Style. Throughout their lives, Michel and Avery shared their studio space together, painting side by side, critiquing each other's work, and developing their shared style which includes the use of abstracted subjects, expressionistic color fields, and harmonious but unusual colors juxtapositions. Michel's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art (Corcoran Collection), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the Israel Museum, among others.

7
Low Tide
Maurice Brazil Prendergast (1858-1924), American
Watercolor and pencil on paper, 19" x 12" (w x h), 1901
Private Collection

Source: Wiki edited
Prendergast's work was strongly associated from the beginning with leisurely scenes set on beaches and in parks. His early work was mostly in watercolor, this being one of them, or monotype. A true independent, he fits into no particular category of modern American art.

8
Circuitus Meridiem
Jon Foreman (1992- ), Welsh
Created at Druidston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, 2025
Source: Facebook/Website, edited

Jon Foreman (1992- ), lives in Pembrokeshire, Wales. A creator of various styles of Land Art, be it with stones or leaves, inland or on beaches. He has also created works in derelict environments using materials such as broken glass or ashes and general debris. The scale of his work varies; he may use stones or driftwood to make something small and minimal or he may draw massive scale sand drawings over 300 feet across. He's created over a thousand sculptures. Read about him and see more art at My Modern Met HERE, and his website Sculpt the World HERE.