*Lake Mohonk* takes its source from a rainbow trout Cronin caught on the lake the year before he painted it. The painting moves between two registers Cronin works in. The frame is signage. Flat color, hand-painted lettering, the composition reading like a roadside placard. Inside the frame, the water is built up in layered passes, more painterly than anything he had made before. The trout itself is etched into with the back of the brush, scratched, worked. The fish has weight and skin and motion.
A vintage postcard, painted by hand, with a rainbow trout that refuses to sit still inside it.
Sold. Private collection, Long Island, NY.
40" x 48" · Oil paint on board · 2023 · Signed verso
