The New Emerging Delaware Artist

I’ve won the Faucett Okie Award for a new emerging Delaware artist at the 69th Annual Rehoboth Art League Fine Art Show. I’m pleased as punch, because I never expected it. And, I almost didn’t enter the Annual because the work I intended to enter, “Henlopen Fishermen” was not accepted when I brought it to the Art league because it was too large. So, I ran home and put together the parts from two different broken Neilson frames in order to frame another drawing that I had just finished. The work is titled “Atlantic Evening.” Both drawings are 32” by 40,” but “Henlopen Fishermen” Is in a two Inch wide wooden frame, which makes it larger than the acceptable dimensions as stated in the Annual’s prospectus. “Atlantic Evening” won the award.

I joke with Joe that actually I am reemerging for another 15 minutes. Now, all I have to do is prove it by finding a Rehoboth Beach gallery that is interested in showing my work. So far that isn’t happening. Part of the problem is that each gallery has an image of itself it wishes to portray. The only gallery whose image fits well with my work has a full stable of artists.* At least, I think that is the problem because I visit with the owners on a regular basis hoping that they will suggest I join their “list of participating artists.” They have not done so. Ah well - I will continue talking to gallery people in and around Lewes and Rehoboth Beach on a regular basis with the goal of eventually so captivating one gallery owner that he/she will feel it is absolutely necessary to put me on their list of showing artists, and give me a show.

*Actually, I hate the term “stable” when it is used to describe a gallery’s list of showing artists because it makes us sound like so much anti-biotic and steroid infused meat ready for the slaughter house.

Global Warming and the Wind

Perhaps it’s a bit precipitous to attribute the constant strong Easterly wind here in South Florida to global warming. Never the less, I’m doing so because last winter and spring there were many days when the Atlantic was calm as a lake. We went swimming once and twice a week in calm clear aqua water. This year, we have managed to swim one time. Beaches have been washed away. There was already one (subtropical) storm named Andrea, and I’m including pictures here that demonstrate her tempestuous tantrums. It was fun taking the photographs because it was a beautiful sunny, hot day with gales blowing out of the east. The Atlantic boiled and sparkled beneath the early May sunshine. I’m sure these photographs will supply me with ammunition for my pastel drawings this summer.

Intracoastal Sunset, February 13, 2007

Tuesday Joe and I noticed that the clouds were becoming more and more spectacular as evening approached so we walked down to the marina and sat on the single bench out toward the end of the dock. I had carried my camera and took pictures during a forty-minute period starting just before the sun dipped below the horizon at 6:03 until it became too dark to shoot without a tripod. As we sat in awe remarking on the shapes of clouds, the changing light, and reflections in the water, the colors gradually changed and deepened from palest yellows and rose contrasted with intense ultramarine to darker and dustier salmon, lavender, and mauve. Joe turned and spied a huge thunderhead building in the east.

“Look at that cloud bloom,” he said, as the sun struck the cloud tops pushing at the upper reaches of the troposphere with purest white, and the boiling cumulonimbus embedded deep in the lower depths of atmosphere painted yellow and orange, I thought that it would be difficult for the camera to capture that which the human eye so easily grasped. However, upon downloading and looking at the images last evening, I realized that the camera lens had framed those spectacular towers so as to help focus attention on the subtle passages of color and asymmetrical perfection.

Here is a recent work, a pastel drawing titled, Juno Beach Sunset (20" x 30"), and is based on photographs taken during an evening at the beach in December 2006.