Author photograph: Hunter Neal, Jr.

In Flounder In, Charles Ferguson presents watercolor sketches from the past six summers on Fishers Island, to which he returns every year. He feels that these 4 x 6 inch sketches are his best work, thanks to their spontaneity. They are accompanied by haiku-like poetry capturing their essence. This remarkable volume, which can be ordered in a special signed and numbered edition, has been greeted enthusiastically by artists and writers alike. Jeffrey Andersen, Director of the Florence Griswold Museum, writes as follows: “Artist Charlie Ferguson is a living legend. Through his long, well-lived life he has been not only a renowned artist, but also an educator, writer, outdoorsman, golfer, scholar, museum director, and art historian. Judging by Flounder In: Fishers Island Sketches, we can add ‘poet’ to a description of his many talents. Haiku-like comments accompany each of the sketches, which are striking in their immediacy, freshness, and vivacity. Drawn from the years 2005–2010, the sketches offer a fascinating glimpse of the rhythmic connectedness of life on Fishers Island. This beautifully conceived book is a perfect distillation of the joy Ferguson finds in a place to which, like his beloved birds, he faithfully returns year after year.” And this from Peter Matthiessen, author of many works including The Snow Leopard and Shadow Country: “Charlie Ferguson’s Flounder In is a wonderful book of impressions excerpted from his notebooks, which I’ve admired in the making for many years.

	Cover sketch by The Author

Nobody knows Fishers Island and its marine environment better than the author, and these colorful sketches, enhanced by his deft comments on the wildlife and shore prospects as observed from his old cottage on North Hill, are a valuable contribution to all of us.”

Charles B. Ferguson, born in 1918 on Fishers Island, New York, received a B.A. degree from Williams College, with a major in Fine Arts. After serving in Signal Corps Intelligence under General Douglas MacArthur during World War II, he studied with Frank Vincent DuMond at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 to 1949. He taught studio and history of art at secondary schools from 1949 to 1965 and was also an art instructor for ten years at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where in 1959 he received a Masters Degree. From 1965 to 1984, he was Director of the New Britain Museum of American Art. Throughout his career as both teacher and museum director, he continued to paint, sketch, and work in wood. His works include six large-scale murals. He has won a number of awards for his paintings, including First Prize in Oils at the Mystic Maritime Gallery’s International Exhibition. He is represented in private, corporate, and museum collections worldwide. In 1950 he and his wife Alice opened the Red Barn Gallery on Fishers Island. He lives in Bloomfield, Connecticut and summers at “Flounder In” on Fishers Island.

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BOOK STATISTICS

ISBN 978-1-936482-03-0

Copyright © 2011 by Charles B. Ferguson

7" x 10" hardback w/ dust jacket, 128 pages