An Ocean of Influence
by Eric Sublett

Paynes grey, brown madder, scumbled burnt and raw sienna, iron oxide, yellow ochre smudged with fingers over a medium-toothed pebble grain beach beside the Hooker’s green and ultra-marine, beneath a Davey’s and cobalt wet-in-wet sky Agh!, shadows move too fast, the light is so fleeting! My thought is broken. “But there is a sense of the wind,” he would say. “…just allow it to take you there. There is improvement here, often the best results come from the creative search…”. Watercolor is just so fluid, hard to control, I’m thinking,”…for form and order…” he would say, after a ten second pause of looking off, his eyes drinking in the surroundings,” symmetry and asymmetry working together, one gives stability and the other…” speaking slowly, making sure I’m listening, “…the other gives movement. See,” he said, pointing to the overlapping folds of land just above where the bank descends to the waterline, and then back to the place

that corresponds on my painting, “…if you lose some of these edges, it’ll give the eye a place to go, right over to here, to where these textures will hold the attention for awhile.” I do see, I think, I say. “Then, as these textures have a general visual direction, the eye will follow up this way, so, if you lose this little edge here, and you add a note of the same color across the way, there, but not as intense, so it won’t jump too hard, or maybe you do want it to jump a little harder,” he would say smiling. “That’s what makes it yours and not mine.” One can see his gentle spirit shining through in his artwork, but his teaching technique has some qualities of trout fishing. Effortlessly casting, patiently reeling in the sensibilities of the student, while allowing time to savor the thought, consider the work, and to make the necessary connections for oneself. All the while, his style has a way of preserving the awe of nature, viability of the student’s own inspiration, and revealing the majesty and mystery of art. This is undoubtedly the core and kernel of the reason why my father has had so broad an influence as time goes by. This is not an actual