This unusual oil painting depicts a special place in my heart; in my family’s heart. My grandparents built a cottage in 1925 on a cliff over-looking Lake Erie. It is a summer home, not weatherized to live in through the ferocious winters there. But it has been a refuge and source of history for 5 generations who continue to cherish it and the commission for this piece came from my cousins.

First, the title “We-Idle-In & Out” is derived from the ancestral surname of my grandparents who built the cottage: Weidlein – pronounced like ‘wide line’. But the nick name of the summer cottage has always been the pun: ‘We Idle In’. There’s a sign with that over the door.

I wanted to illustrate the setting and vulnerable placement of the cottage on the 100ft cliff over the vast expanse of the Great Lake, that really seems to be perched on the edge of an ocean.

I also wanted to include the family tradition of viewing the sunset on the water, where everyone gathers with a cocktail in hand, out close to the edge of the cliff, and hopes to see the phenomenon known as the ‘GREEN FLASH’ which, in the right circumstances, appears just as the sun is going down. In the painting I used a subtle, but bright, lime green color in the center of the last glimpse of the sun.

I devised a way to show the elements I wanted to emphasize by putting the cottage, with the trees in the adjoining ravine it sits next to, on a center panel of 1/4 inch wood which is then raised up with a 1/4 inch spacer inset underneath it. This makes the cottage sort of afloat over the ocean-Lake.

The Lake and sky then are painted on a larger piece of Birch plywood, 32 inch x 40 inch. I hand selected that particular piece because it has distinctive grain patterns that give the impression of watery waves. I only needed to apply very thin translucent oil paint to bring out those wave patterns.

This was a fun and inspiring challenge for me to create and very meaningful to the family. Below is another closer look where you can see the wood grain and the center details. - G.P.L.