Two of my painter friends and I were on Martha's Vineyard in September 2017. We painted the sunset one evening at Menemsha and afterward we each wandered around taking photos. It was twilight, which for me is a magical time of day. Being outside alone on a warm night takes me back to childhood, and the delicious mystery of an after-dark game of hide & seek.
As we were leaving, I grabbed one last shot of this house, which is on the turn that descends into the beach town. It is an older house, with painted rocks along the front of the property and a massive evergreen that blended into the house in the approaching darkness. It seemed like it had a family story.
The following winter while preparing work for a show here in Pittsburgh, I used the image as the basis for the painting you see here. The title comes from an old Louis Armstrong version of "What a Wonderful World", which my mother loved.
