Except to check for rain or to admire an interesting cloud, most people likely don’t spend much time gazing at the sky. For painter Tom Upson, however, the sky is more than a passing consideration. It’s the foundational element that brings each of his paintings to life.

Tom’s watercolor paintings require a masterful understanding of the nuances of “Cape Cod light” to capture the region’s many moods. “This little sandbar we live on has its own very unique lighting,” he says. “That’s the main focus of my work.”

To paint light, one must understand how it works. For Tom, the sky is a vehicle for doing just that—studying light in all its variations to convey a specific atmosphere in his art. Each day brings new cloud patterns, colors, and luminosities to observe. 

There is perhaps nobody more familiar with the Cape Cod sky than Tom, who spent twenty-five years working as a shellfisherman in what he calls “sky country.” “When you’re out on a clam bed you see all the patterns of light, clouds, and color that occur,” Tom recalls. “You see what the colors actually are as opposed to someone’s interpretation.”

Once, he remembers, a series of squalls came through while he and his brother were clamming. “It stopped as quickly as it started and twenty minutes later you could see the big storm cloud over Monomoy. The water was an emerald green—the sun over the ocean was creating some really spectacular colors. I did a painting of that one from memory.”

Despite years of practice, Tom still finds painting a sky to be the hardest part of his work. The impact of this singular choice on the overall effect of a finished piece is significant. “The sky determines everything else,” he says. “It determines what weather I choose and how bright or subtle the colors will be. Say, for example, the clouds were coming in closer and hiding the sun—the whole picture would be darker.” 

Tom often rifles through memories of beautiful skies—seas of overcast gray, expanses of clear blue, blinding white clouds—before settling on the perfect fit for any given scene. The sky in Toby’s Island, for example, in which shafts of warm light break forth from the clouds, was pulled from one he’d witnessed while clamming.

Alongside light, color is a critical element in creating atmosphere. A blue sky, heavy with the promise of the day, is just evolving with the light of the golden hour, like the one in Hen Cove Cottage conveys the end of a hot, summer day, while the humidity of an afternoon rainstorm is depicted through soft pink thunderclouds in Toby’s Island. 

Tom’s technique is heavily influenced by Carl Evers, a notable marine artist under whom he briefly studied in high school. A lifelong lover of nautical subjects and already an avid pastel artist, teenage Tom first noticed Evers’ work at a marine art show in Greenwich, Connecticut. “I just about fell over when I saw it,” he laughs. “I was lucky enough to spend a couple afternoons with him and I developed my technique from his.” 

Though Tom vacationed in Chatham as a child and has lived on Cape Cod full time for over 30 years, he continues to find new corners to explore. “I spend a lot of time cruising around the Cape,” he says. “Until four years ago the one place I’d never been was the Buzzards Bay coastline. It’s a very pretty area.” These excursions to Falmouth and Bourne have provided the inspiration for many of Tom’s most recent works.

Tom has since retired from shellfishing, but his love for capturing the Cape Cod coast in all its luminous forms has only deepened with time. After all, he lives in sky country, where inspiration is endless if one only remembers to look up.   

Tom Upson is represented by Tree’s Place Gallery on Rte. 6A in Orleans.

~Hannah Kunze