Salt Pond Bay

David Little

Water Island Series, St Thomas, USVI 1983.

For David Little, painting out-of-doors began in Prospect Park in Brooklyn and in the potato fields and by the ocean on the South Fork of Long Island over thirty years ago. Encouragement came from my uncle, the artist William Kienbusch, and from my parents.

In the summer of 1983, I stayed at my parent’s home in Sprat Bay, United States Virgin Islands, alone for three weeks, doing artwork in various media. Water Island is a lovely island that is five minutes by motorboat from the waterfront in Charlotte Amalie.

Kiddel Bay

I was also taking photographs of “objets trouves”, flotsam and jetsam pic ked up on neighboring beaches. Anything and everything, familiar or unknown, man-made or natural, interested me; the interplay of overlapping shapes, textures, and colors, and the variety of materials. One beach in particular, Limestone, had thousands of small, white, sun-bleached coral pieces.

The compositions were arranged playfully, solving puzzle-like challenges. As with Surrealism, creating a new reality/mystery through their interaction and juxtaposition. I may well have been channeling Joseph Cornell and Georgio de Chirico. I shot these photographs with an OM-1 35mm camera, a macro lens, and a tripod. All of the works in this edition are untitled except as a series with a file # from the negative for direct reference.

St. John, US Virgin Islands

David Little’s work is currently on display in our Freeport, Maine Showroom. The show, Home and Away: Maine Artists Exploring the World, runs from June 2025 through January 2026.