Lemme Take You To The Beach~
There’s a pond behind our home, another at the park we walk everyday and I’m walking distance to the Fox river…Lake Michigan, Superior & Erie are all bodies of water I frequent annually, but it’s the vast Atlantic ocean that beckons me. I love sitting around bodies of water and painting them, but its beach time that calls me home, whether we are there alone or surrounded be 100’s of others that have flocked there for similar reason’s, the peace, calm & serenity, joy & bliss that bodies of water instill.
The ever changing seasonal flora & fauna around bodies of water make them especially attractive to me. There’s a peaceful and all encompassing sense of universal belonging & forever, that fills my every sense. I’m lost in my thoughts near these areas where land & sky meet water, transcending all else, accept my feeling of connectedness to all life… a thought, a realization. a meditation of oneness.
This grouping of paintings, where the subject is the ocean & beaches. From top, left to right is, a group of plein-air artists on Herring Cove on Cape Cod, the 1 st day of harvest moon rising over Martha’s Vineyard, the lighthouse at Race Point in Provincetown, MA. with a few beachcombers, a pier over the Pacific, swimmer’s, a piece inspired by a film and a snorkeling adventure in Key West & a film, the pier that reaches out over St. Augustine Beach Florida, Marconi Beach on the Cape in Massachusetts, Seagulls & Sand Pipers on a beach, either St. Simons GA. or Flagler Beach FL. & the path on the beach that reaches out to the Atlantic from a favorite little eatery in Ptown, the Canteen. These are the places that inspired me to paint them, but what they remind you of , where they bring you & your imagination and stories you create, is up to you.
I paint on location, take lots of photos references, to paint in the studio & use my imagination to create these compositions. I’ll do a kinetic high energy, drip & splatter painting in acrylic paint, to compliment or spike the colors that will become the painting, Then using my arsenal of oil paints & utensils, brushes, palette knives, sculpting tools, tissues and a finger or 2, I go to work in a high energy, free flowing, & spontaneous way, to share the mood & movement of the scene. The initial concept is the thing, for once the image is in my head, it’s a simply a matter of getting in down on canvas as quickly & honestly as possible. Often times with this Frank Zappa tune repeating it self, over & over again, in my head…so, ”Lemme Take You To The Beach, la,la,la,la…laaa.”
I hope you’ve enjoyed this bit of insight into my process & mind.
Message me with any thoughts or questions you may have,
Richard
