Rehoboth Beach in the Spring… just rambling

Or – Ode to Chartreuse – yes, it’s been raining and chilly, but the new leaves on the oaks outside my window seem all the more intense for the cool, cloudy wet weather. I forgot just how algid and grey mid spring can be, no matter – I feel more at home than I do in south Florida.

I’ve got to get my butt in gear and prepare the studio for work. I need to order art supplies, take new photos of the saltwater marshes in Sussex County, print photos, square up the photos and paper in preparation for mixing and sketching the rough image. I don’t use the squares for everything, but they do help to scale things up or down. Back in the sixties through eighties I had to fight with the powers that be in my local community back in Pennsylvania about using the squaring technique with students. I trained students to work from their own photographs, and to use the photographs of others only if the work would be used minimally, and if altered beyond recognition. I feel totally vindicated today with so many well-known artists admitting to the use of the very same techniques in preparation for their work. For instance, the artist Peter Doig, though not talking specifically about squaring up technique discusses the use of photographs in his work. "I'm not trying to make paintings look like photos. I want to make paintings using photos as a reference, the way painters did when photography was first invented."*

Looking out the studio skylights at the yellow-green foliage and gray sky, I keep telling myself not to let the weather get me down, after all, it’s not like I could be at the beach. I can’t see color well enough to work with the pastels in the dull rainy-day light, but I have enough work to keep me busy for forty days and nights. Drat! Got to watch saying such things! It just could happen. I remember springs and summers in the North that were gray, chilly, and damp constantly. Ah well, I have no control over such things imagined or otherwise. God, in his infinite and random wisdom will decide the matter.

I promised to post photographs of the decorations on our front lawn when we arrived in Rehoboth Beach last week.



It was great fun, and what a super welcome!

*artquotes.net, "inspirational art quotes and fine artists, http://www.artquotes.net/quotesartists.htm. Viewed 9:30 A.M., EDT.