Flags, Flowers, and Monarchs Outside The Barnacle

Set up today just outside The Barnacle, the little café perched on the water in Monhegan harbor — one of the island's gathering spots, where everyone eventually ends up for coffee, pastries, or just a seat with a view.

The scene had everything I could ask for: an American flag draped loosely over the deck railing, boxes of flowers spilling color against the weathered red wood, the harbor and rocky shoreline stretching out beyond it, and a local seated quietly at a table, taking it all in. And weaving through the whole composition — monarchs, drifting past the flowers and out over the water, the same way they seem to be everywhere on this island right now.

I loved the challenge of balancing all of it — the graphic punch of the flag's red, white, and blue against the softer greens and violets of the flower boxes, the quiet stillness of the seated figure against the flutter of butterflies overhead. A busy scene, but one that still felt calm, the way an afternoon at The Barnacle always does.

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🎨 Materials:

Watercolor
11x14"
Painted en plein air, outside The Barnacle, Monhegan Island, ME

If you've got a favorite harborside spot of your own — the kind of place where you always end up sitting a little longer than planned — I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

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