3rd Time's the Charm

Here's a spot is Pensacola that I've known about since I moved here ten years ago. My dad showed it to me when I was looking for places to paint in my new home. Jo Patti's is a family owned seafood market on the water that fishing boats with their fresh catch pull up to daily. Anyone one else would have seen the possibilities immediately. Open air and water, blue herons perched on pilings, and picturesque shrimp boats. But I ignored it until recently. Maybe it was some kind of cosmic payback for my initial lack of appreciation, that instead of finishing this painting in one go, I had to return three times to complete it.
On the first trip out, I couldn't find the Plein Air Painters of Pensacola who I was painting with that day. When I finally found them, I'd lost a good part of the morning and the Florida heat had become intense. I was barely able to get more than a loose sketch.

On the second painting day, the weather had completely changed and a boat was partially obscuring my subject. I went ahead anyway but when I got home I saw that the painting had become dark and murky and the boat was too large. I scraped it down.

I was determined to make something of my efforts, so, I went out a third time. Finally success! It still needs a bit of cleaning up on the building on the right, but it's basically done and will be in the Annual Show of the Plein Air Painters of Pensacola opening on September 6 at the Wright Place Gallery in Pensacola. Please stop by for the opening reception from 5 until 7 oçlock. 

Revisiting Old Friends

I once read that Degas would rework finished paintings until he was happy with them, even taking them off clients walls after they had been sold. I've been reworking some of my larger pieces that I wasn't entirely happy with. This 30x40 of a place in Big Sur, is one of them. It needed some simplification and a greater sense of distance on the rock outcropping out in the water. It's better now but I still want to study it for a few days to see if it needs anything else.

Looking West

Thought the color was too bright in it's original version, it's a bit washed out in this iPhone photo. I'll have to photograph it with a real camera before adding it back to my website.

The Inner Life of Tomorrow's Artists

I was talking to a friend today while we watched her nine year old, Sophie, who was glued to her iPad. It struck me how vastly different that child's nine year old world of self amusement is, compared to my own when I was nine. Anyone who has children knows how easily kids take to technology and how ordinary and commonplace it all is to them. I could see myself through my memory as a nine year and suddenly, I felt very sorry for Sophie. My childhood was lived primarily outdoors and my world moved at such a leisurely pace that I had time to observe and absorb everything my senses encountered just by going about the day to day business of play. Maybe my world moved exceptionally slowly.That was after all the period in my life that I got labeled with the nickname Terry the Turtle. Yet all the beauty I saw and felt, fills a deep reservoir and is precisely the pool that I draw from today whenever I pick up my brush.

I wonder, what kind of inner life will today's kids, the artists of tomorrow, have?

Sun Drenched Dunes - 11 x 14 - oil on canvas
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