All painters are voyeurs. Nearly all painters love street
life. I think the reason Paris has been so important
in the history of art is because of its caf�� life. ��� [P]
ainters live off the eye. In fact, one of the things I like
right here is the tidal flat. At low tide, it goes out nine
hundred feet and people are walking all the time, so I
have my own caf�� right in the water. There���s no other
place in the world���or in
America that I know of���
where such a marvelous
thing for a painter exists.
Robert Motherwell
The Green Beside the Sea
1966
P r o v i n c e t o w n
was
Motherwell���s
���neighborhood.���
He
loved the ease of life
there, compared to the
frenzy of New York. He
spoke passionately about
the effects of the sunlight
reflecting off the water.
���It���s exactly the same
kind of light that Matisse
loved or Mir�� loved or the
Greek sculptors loved,���
he said looking dreamily
out toward the bay.
Motherwell was only one
of the Abstract Expressionists who came to Provincetown,
but he stayed the longest. It was his summer home until
HYLAND
