Art World
Wet Paint in the Wild: Daniel Heidkamp Displays His Plein Air Paintings in the Hamptons
The artist takes us through a week in his life.
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The artist takes us through a week in his life.
Daniel Heidkamp
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Welcome to Wet Paint in the Wild, the freewheeling—and free!—spinoff of Artnet News Pro’s beloved Wet Paint gossip column, where we give art-world insiders a disposable camera to chronicle their lives on the circuit. To read the latest Wet Paint column, click here (members only).
It’s the dog days of summer, and most wise New Yorkers have found a reason to be out East. For painter Daniel Heidkamp, that meant opening up a pop-up show at Montauk’s Fort Pond House, a mixed-use space in a public park right across from the beloved Surf Lodge. I’ve long been a fan of Heidkamp’s bucolic landscape paintings (he painted all of the ones in this show en plein air, and it shows), and in lieu of making it out there to see the show myself, I sent him with a disposable camera to capture the scene in the Hamptons this year. Take it away, Daniel!
In this photo, Half Gallery director Erin Goldberger and I peek through the front windows of the Fort Pond House at the start of the event.
My first stop on the drive was the Big Duck in Flanders, NY. This duck was originally constructed in 1931 as a place to sell duck eggs and has since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. According to writer and summer resident of Long Island George Plimpton, “The Big Duck was important because it was the landmark that meant New York City was far behind and we were almost home.”
Next we started to fuel up on the art vibes at the Springs General Store. Originally opened in 1844, this is where local artist Jackson Pollock famously traded his drip paintings for groceries. The store is currently shuttered, but the pumps remain as relics of a different time.
Speaking of Pollock, his distinctive studio is located just up the street in Springs, and his equally unique gravesite is at the nearby Green River Cemetery. Here the resting places of both Pollock and his wife, the wonderful painter Lee Krasner, are marked by various size boulders and now decorated shrine-like with pebbles and a porcelain poodle.
On the theme of abstract painters, my travels next took me to the Parrish Art Museum to see Eddie Martinez’s current exhibition. Like me, Eddie spent some formative early years in the Boston area, and it has been inspiring to see this friend and colleague climb to great heights including being part of this year’s Venice Biennale . While I didn’t get to Italy to see that show, it was great to catch this current batch of large colorful ‘butterfly paintings’ closer to home.
By Sunset I arrived in Montauk and was able to catch the fading light casting colors on the harbor boats near Star Island.
In the morning Bill Powers from Half Gallery showed up and we drove out to the pier at Navy Beach. Bill likes this spot because it reminds him of the anxiety-inducing bridge in the painting ‘The Scream.’ While Bill seems pretty relaxed in this picture, perhaps it’s the Mark Grotjahn mask on his sweatshirt that fills in for Munch’s shrieking figure.
It was a red hot weekend and I decided to take my sketch book to the rocky beach at Hero State Park.