Sea, Sand, & Shore Collection

 For part of my 2025 Sea, Sand, & Shore Collection at the Louisa Gould Gallery in Vineyard Haven, MA, Martha's Vineyard, I wanted to showcase some of the buoys around the island.

 

There are many of these marine markers to choose from...... for now. Currently there is a proposal from the Coast Guard to remove some buoys, and various mariner organizations are opposed to the idea. The Coast Guard asserts that removing 60 buoys around Cape Cod is part of an essential modernization plan and sailors, commercial fisherman, harbormasters, and others are opposed.

Here is one article published June 9, 2025

 

 Assembly of Delegates opposes Coast Guard plan to remove some buoys in Cape Cod waters

 

 

I won't use the blog to weigh in on the issue as I'm sure there is much to consider on both sides.

 

I will say that the allure of painting buoys will always be with me.

 

For the gallery I decided to paint four buoys (two red, two green), all with different shapes. The water in each painting is unique, reflecting the buoy's setting in Nantucket Sound.

 

 Buoy 1    9" X 11.5"    Original Oil 

 

 

 

Buoy 4A    8" X 11"     Original Oil

 

 

 

Buoy 25     8" X 11"     Original Oil

 

 

 

Buoy 4       9" X 9"      Original Oil

 

 

 

 

   
 

Deadlines + Finished

Deadlines would seem to be contrary to an artistic endeavor. I like deadlines. They add structure.

 

However, there are times ......and this was one of them.

I contacted my gallery 8am on a Tuesday to let them know the first set of paintings was shipped the day before and would arrive on Monday. The owner said that was good because she was hanging my show on Tuesday, the day after they would arrive. In one week. Unfortunately, this was the first I heard of that.  

 

If the gallery was across the street, the next state, or even in the same time zone, this would not be quite the issue. But, I am 3000 miles away. I have three more paintings to ship and was planning on bringing the last four (small ones) with me for the show for a total of nine pieces.

 

Time to make some calls. First I called my framer here (before she opened - handy to have her cell number.) She could join and fill the three frames and have them ready by 2:30 pm today. Next call was to my shipper. He could have the custom boxes ready before he closed at 3 pm. So far, so good.

 

One of the three paintings was still in my studio and it was time to varnish it after I scanned it. I have a 12" X 18" flatbed professional scanner which unfortunately only works on a Windows 7 machine. It's set up in a separate room for ease of scanning. When I turned on the computer it decided it wanted to run a disk check. Tick, tick, tick. Time is slipping away. 45 minutes later disk check complete. Restart and Windows 7 comes up and ..... black screen. Tick, tick, tick. Restart - same result. restart, restart. It will not work for me today.

 

That leaves the deadline and a choice. Do I varnish the painting (giving it 2 hours to dry before leaving the studio) and have a chance to get the shipment moving today? Or, do I only get two of the three paintings shipped and bring the non-scanned painting to my professional printer guy to scan which would take a few days? This painting would be too big to bring with me on the flight so it would arrive late and not be there for the show opening.

 

I decided to forego the scan. Varnish. Wait. Drive to framer. Take paintings in their frames to shipper. Get labels printed all by 2:50pm. This did miss the 2:15 pm FedEx pickup at the shipper but I was prepared to drive the boxes to the main FedEx Spokane office. 

In hindsight, my decision seems to have been a good one. This shipment was delayed because they put the trailer from the semi on a train ......in Ohio. (no idea why.) The three paintings arrived safely on Wednesday and the gallery owner had already pushed the gallery rehanging a day later to accommodate the arrival of my paintings. 

 

This story is probably a familiar one to many artists.

The below is a photo I took of the completed painting. It's not as good as a scan but probably having it at the show opening is more important.

 

 

 Garden Visitor

16" X 12"

Original Oil 

The Bluejay

 Almost always I save the animal to paint last. It's my favorite part of a wildlife painting.

For this piece I started as I usually do - with the eye.  

Reality

 

My paintings are realistic but I view reality with flexibility. The leaf in the middle bottom of the painting which stretches across two pickets had brown edges and the bent over edge had large brown blotches of dried plant. Could I have painted it that way? Of course. But, would presenting the leaf that way add anything to the story or would it be a distraction? I opted for turning back the clock on its life cycle.

 

In addition, the clump of leaves in the bottom left were much darker and hard to read. This left me with an opportunity to add dappled light to the group, change their position, and modify the stems.

 

I could have left out all the leaves and just had the flowers in the background but to me the fence would then be a barrier, a jail, holding back the flowers. The fluidity of the leaves helps add motion to the painting. The pink flower peeking between the pickets is also a deliberate choice, in this case to marry the background to the foreground with its visual proximity to the outside leaves.

White, but not white

 Shadowed whites can go in any number of directions: purple, blue, greens.

 

For the shadows of the white fence I opted for a gray-ish light blue-ish teal. There are spots which called for a cooler look so I mixed a bluer color to blend in to the main base color. 

The color gets darker on the pickets moving toward the bottom of the painting to convince the eye that there is less light. You will notice just under the bird the picket edge is lighter. So the pickets do not look flat, the lighter edge gives the feeling the pickets were painted with a satin or semi-gloss paint.

 

 

 

 

 

Pink

 

The garden which was the inspiration for the flowers had lots of color choices. There was yellow, a deep purple from some interesting alliums, blues from morning glories, and more. I decided these flowers with the added pops of pink would showcase this bird the best.

 

 

Flowers

 

Without most of the glare from wet paint you can better see the color of the background. I'm keeping the flower detail to a minimum so the focus will remain on the bird.

 

 

 

 

19 years

 It has been 19 years since I had the idea for this painting. While on the east coast I saw a bluejay near a white picket fence. Bluejays are birds I grew up in Rhode Island but are only rare visitors to Washington State where I live now.

It's hard to say why it has taken so long for this piece to wind up on my easel, though I didn't figure out the setting (the garden and the fence) until inspired by a garden in New England two years ago.

 

 

The background looks black in this quick phone photo but it is actually a deep green. 

I used Rembrandt Sap green, Richeson Cobalt Green Deep, Richeson Hansa Yellow, and a touch of Rembrandt Burnt Umber. The effect is almost a dark green suede.

 

 

 

 Some of the plant leaves are painted so they appear to either emerge from or disappear into the background.

 

 

Finished

 

Surf's Up

12" X 30"

Original Oil

 

Scanned image

 

The painting took longer than the blog's elapsed time but after not posting for quite a while I thought an accelerated post was in order.

 

 

Pelicans

 

Having the brown pelicans in the painting imparts another element of timelessness and movement. The painting is 12" X 40" so there doesn't need to be a huge amount of detail in the bird. In fact, if there were, the pelican would look stuck on rather than a part of the painting.

 

Starting on the next bird.

 

Spray

 I divide water spray in to two general categories: spot and brushed. 

For spots I paint individual dots of "white" water.

For brushed I paint small bit of "white" and gently blend them together. 

 

 

Moving Rocks

 

I guess this is less moving rocks than removing rocks. In my original concept I thought I would have a lower left rock to suggest how close to the shore this wave is. However, after roughing it in (see the previous post) all the rock was doing was breaking the flow of the water. Which I guess is what rocks along the shore do, but it wasn't adding anything to the movement in the painting.

 

 Above I am starting to fill in the "white" on the right foam. My whites generally are titanium white with a touch of cadmium yellow dark. I am not fulling covering the yellow ochre wash underneath. Leaving the warm "space" tends to add a vibrating feeling to the water.

More wave

 

 

Now that I have some painted texture in the lower section, the movement in the painting is starting to come together. The three disparate sections (background blue, wave, and lower shore water) feel more integral to one another.

Modification

 

Coming back to work on the next section I found the "background" water much too light. It wouldn't show off the wave the way I want it to so I painted it darker. Sometimes a section I want to change is still wet enough to rework as this section was. I find painting water requires constant modification. 

A breaking wave

Last fall's drive down the Oregon and California coasts was filled with inspiration. 

 

My first painting from the trip features a breaking wave. An elongated format seemed best as I worked out the composition. Of course I wanted to incorporate a few of the brown pelicans who were flying among the waves.

 

 

When painting water I like to block out a lot of uninterrupted  time so I can work wet-on-wet and easily blend the edges. Though oil paint is slow-drying, some colors dry more quickly than others. My browns can dry overnight and whites can take more than a week. (I don't use a medium and mix directly from the tube so the colors are not diluted.) Working in one section at a time works best for me.