Digging at the Inlet

Oil on Canvas
11" x 14"
unframed

One frigid winter day I set up next to the boat house at Margo's cove. the tide was on it's way out, and the wind was blistering. As I began to paint, a figure walked down from the woods onto the mudflats, bending over between the ice flows. I am imagining the person was "worming", which is the back breaking work of digging for blood worms (also known as Marine worms; somewhat frightening creatures growing up to 14 inches long, who do bite, and are sold for use in freshwater fishing. In 2020 this industry paid about 8.7 million to the harvesters in Maine).
The worms are dug on the receding tide by plunging a rake into the mud, pulling back the sediment, and pulling out the worms by hand.
My planned motif was changed- then quickly realized I was more the intruder , and my plein air physical discomforts were small in comparison to this person's experience.