Outer Beach Dunescapes

Along the Atlantic side of Cape Cod between Provincetown and Orleans, there is a wall of sand and clay that rises from the beach to the forest and grasslands above. Thanks to the Cape Cod National Seashore, no businesses and very few houses blemish this natural horizon. This dune-bluff varies from five to 100 feet over the level of the beach below. As you face it from the beach, a ribbon of vegetation fringes the top, exposing the roots beneath a thin crust of dirt.

My childhood home, now abandoned and in ruins, still sits on top of these dunes, waiting for a winter storm to undermine its foundation and drop it to the beach below. Over the years, I've spent many hours drawing and painting this simple but dramatic landscape, particularly the stretch near Newcomb Hollow in Wellfleet. Time of day and season, along with the varying weather conditions, change the colors and mood of the scene greatly. Most of the paintings are about four feet long (or tall). The magnum opus of this series was the 69-foot installation Edge of the Continent/Center of the World at the Off Main Gallery, then located in a repurposed 1875 barn or carriage house, in the summer of 2020.