Haul (Quay Figures, Two Planes)

The best passage in The Port of Saint-Tropez is the lower band. Six near-black figures bend over barrels and boat poles, and one stands holding his pole a few degrees off vertical. They are the only shapes in the picture doing any work. Everything above them is weather.

I cut the band out and repainted it at poster size: tempera and gouache on cream handmade paper, jet black and earth red, one ochre wall plane behind, a single umber shadow to lock the six into one shape, because a working body reads by its contour from across a room or it does not read at all. Each limb is one tapering stroke. Nothing modeled inside. Faces withheld. One printed word, lower right. From ten paces it should still say what it says.