Sea Oats

Vegetation that thrives in sand dunes help protect inland areas. Sadly, a lot of our native coastal areas have been destroyed by development of one kind or another. During the hurricane season, the loss of these dunes and plants allows the seas to surge across the low lying areas they once protected. Sea oats are found in the southeastern parts of the US and throughout the Caribbean. Beautiful and useful in many ways, sea oats, mangroves, and other coastal vegetation play a bigger role in our world than is often acknowledged.

Hurricane Weather

Another beach scene, and a building! Am I on a roll or what? Here, something very simple, but when you think about how the painting was made, perhaps not so simple.

The lone, cylindrical shape heeds shadow and sun, and standing against the sky, It needs to be obviously separate. I could have used masking fluid to create the hard edges, but I didn’t. Instead, I painted around the lighthouse, starting at an edge and then puling the colors out. I did okay on the left side, but the right side was more problematic. Oh, well. Still, I rather like the end result given the challenge of the multi-colored sky.

Fires, hurricanes, and now snow in the middle of the country. What’s going on!?

Church in the Dunes

Southern beaches, from the Carolinas around Florida and along the Gulf of Mexico coast, have a quality very unlike that of California or New England. Soft white sand, beaches beautifully wide and flat, sea oats, and dunes that catch the breath. The sky is vast and expansive, clouds build up, and there is something grander than can be described. I am trying to capture this, from reality and from imagination.

If you have noticed, over the past several months my paintings, in pastel, gouache, and watercolor, have been centered on the theme of water. Rivers, ocean, lakes. I am beginning to feel comfortable with water now, and it is time to expand the subject matter. Now, simple buildings are going to be included, and sand. Sand is remarkably hard to paint! It varies from dark beige-brown to incredibly bright and white. There is also black sand, but I’m not there yet!

Today’s painting is a church, tucked in the dunes of some coastal island. Sandy, dirt roads run between dunes with scrubby vegetation. It works.

Fiery Sunrise

This Labor Day weekend has been hotter than hell, setting records for heat (121 F in Los Angeles), and creating havoc. Fires are everywhere in California. So far we have been spared – but the smoke is filling the sky from fires hundreds of miles away, and ash is falling. The sunrises are beautiful because of it, but breathing it is not so beautiful! This morning, the sky was murky with a few clouds. Through it all came a fiery red sun.

I was a bit torn about editing this photo as I did – the sky is more lavender here than in reality. However, I am of the thought that the unreal quality I saw this morning is better expressed in unreal colors . . .