All prints are handmade by Peter Ralston on archival rag paper with an archival ink set.

Small Matted Prints - This collection is printed on 8.5 x 11 inch sheets, matted, ready to be framed.

New Work - This open edition is a collection of images created since January 2004. They are printed on 17 x 22 inch sheets.

The Master Prints - This limited edition (LE) print is limited to 50 prints of this image plus ten artist proofs (AP). They are printed on 24 x 36 inch sheets.

Custom sizes of this image are available by special request. 

The story behind Idyll

After an evening get-together on Swan’s Island my friends and I returned to Raven at Garden Point on the northern tip of the island and set off in the gathering dark for Bass Harbor, seven miles off to the northeast.  We had scarcely left the float when the big - and until then ever loyal and faithful – diesel rapidly began to lose power. I quickly throttled back to the lowest possible idle and with the help of a cooperative tide barely managed to get us onto a nearby mooring.

As darkness shut in, we shut down for the evening. While there was meager food aboard, there were assorted liquid spirits and thus fortified, and with a providential supply of sleeping bags, we all managed to spend a reasonably comfortable night aboard.

When I sleep on boats I invariably get up very early to reconnoiter, and/or take photographic advantage of the morning light. That morning was still as still can be….not a breath of breeze and there was only the dimmest suggestion of dawn’s light when I awoke. 

It was too early to wake everyone else by dealing with the engine problem so I quietly just let the morning unfold. It wasn’t long before a boat working through its morning haul came into earshot, then around the nearby island and, almost as though it was posing, hauled one right in front of the rising sun. Idyllic in every way.

Although getting Raven running again was a time-consuming and messy challenge that morning, and there were people aboard who had been seriously inconvenienced by not getting ashore the night before, sometimes these things are simply meant to be….and they can serve to remind us that just going with the flow is not always without its own rewards.