Saw a bobcat

Part of the thrill of painting outdoors, in front of my subject, is that something quite unexpected could happen. I’m thinking of October 2023 when I was painting Blue Hill Mountain in Maine, standing in the field with my easel trying to capture the afternoon light on the south slope.

The light changed, the sun was going down. I had finished the sketch (two at once, side by side, actually) and was starting to pack up. I saw something interesting out in the field between me and the mountain, and realized it was a bobcat, a large one, out in the field hunting for its supper.

Now this is the kind of thing that just can’t happen while I’m painting in the studio, and it was worth all the trouble of hauling the paints around, getting myself out there in the cold weather. The bobcat sat and regarded the meadow, noticed a hiker and his dog just starting from the parking lot. It looked over at me and seemed to dismiss me, as though it sensed that I was no threat. And I wasn’t. I was filled with the realization that I was so lucky to see the bobcat out in the open like this, after all the times I’ve followed a bobcat’s tracks in the snow in the woods of late winter, or seen one from the car while driving past a field.

But I didn’t put the bobcat in a painting, yet. I’ll do that, and when I do, it will have a lot of meaning for me.