Chesapeake Bay I c. 2001

Ross Merrill made this watercolor, Chesapeake Bay I, on a sheet of paper. The marks are applied in a way that feels immediate, like he’s trying to capture a fleeting moment, the light, the atmosphere. Looking at it, the materiality of the watercolor really comes through. See how the pigment has settled into the paper? It’s thin and transparent, allowing the whiteness of the paper to shine through. In the top left corner, the cloud is a mass of grey with these outlines of yellow that almost feels like a halo. The brushstrokes are loose and gestural, and the whole thing has a kind of hazy, dreamlike quality. The way he’s layered the colors creates depth and dimension, so you can almost feel the humidity in the air. It's something like a Turner painting, with it's interest in capturing light, but a little rawer, more immediate. It’s a reminder that art is always an experiment, a way of seeing and thinking that embraces uncertainty.