Right in My Own Back Yard ~ A Year of Plein Air Oil Paintings from Mathews County
Haven, oil, 12 x 48, August 1, 9:00 am Haven Beach
Gentle Day, oil June 14, 7:00 am Bethel Beach Preserve	Sunday Afternoon, oil New Point Marsh	June Evening, oil June 10, 7:30 pm Queen’s Creek, Hallieford
Looking Back, oil August 16, 10 am Aaron’s Beach	Tide Coming In at Bethel Aurust 20, 5 pm Bethel Beach Preserve	The Crossing, oil York River Narrows
Until the Cows Come Home oil, May 19, 5:00 pm pasture across from Mathews High	Fertile Pasture, oil June 19, 7:30 am Misty Cove, Hallieford	Bluebirds in the Hay, oil May 22, 6:00 pm Oakleigh Estate, Cobbs Creek
DIRECTIONS The White Dog Inn is located in Mathews across from the old court house, 68 Church Street. The

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This painting is what I call a memory piece. I don’t mean memory of one particular place, however. What I mean is emotional memory. Memory of the feeling of being in this landscape I call home.

Living so close to the Chesapeake Bay (I can ride my bicycle to the Bay just down the lane), being in the marsh grasses, in the clouds, on the water ~ all of these are things I do regularly whether I am painting or not. And each time I am drinking it all in! When I come back to the studio and begin to paint, it all oozes out onto the canvas. How can it not? That’s about all that’s in there now a days.

I painted this with a brush and palette knife. The soft colors blend optically, with only a suggestion of a shape or a slice of color with the knife. This gives it a lovely texture.

Midsummer Dream
oil on canvas, 30″ x 40

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Plein air and studio oil paintings inspired by the coastal marshes near my home in Mathews County, Virginia. I find myself continually drawn to the same stretches of beach and marshes ~ each time searching with my brush for yet another way to express my deep connection with this particular landscape. It is as if this landscape resides somewhere deep inside my bones. Whether a past life, a dream or memory of another place ~ the mystery of it all continues to capture my attention and my brush. My spiritual connection to it is something I feel compelled to explore!

See the Kindred Gardens of the Chesapeake video. To see enlargements, click on individual images. Email for availability and location of the painting(s) you are interested in seeing in person!

Looking Back, oil, 24 x 30 Aarons Beach, 8:00 am	Tide Coming In Bethel, oil, 30 x 40 Bethel Beach Preserve, August, 6:00 pm	Sunday Afternoon, oil, 40 x 30 New Point Comfort, 10 am
Haven, oil, 12 x 48 Haven Beach, August 1, 7:00 am
Tide Coming In, oil, 12 x 16 Bethel Beach Preserve, August 15, 2:00 pm	Island in the Sun, oil, 24 x 30 Bethel Beach Presesrve August 29, 6:00 pm	Been Fishin’, oil, 8 x 10 (in the video, this painting is the one I am working on)
August Sunrise, 36 x 24, oil, Bethel Beach Preserve, August 8:00 am	Silver Lining II, oil, 30 x 40, Bethel Beach Preserve, August 25, 7:00 am	Flowing, oil, 24 x 20 Bethel Beach Preserve, August 25, 11:00 am
Bethel Beach Gulls, oil, 6 x 8, Bethel Beach Preserve, July 15, 7:00 am	Gentle Day, oil, 16 x 20, Bethel Beach Preserve June 20, 9:00 am	Ponies in the Light, oil 48 x 60 Assateague National Seashore, June 6, 5:30 pm

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Why do I have this feeling of not doing anything? I don’t feel like I have accomplished a thing in days. And what, pray tell, do these little paintings from my vegetable garden have to do with it?

Jim and I took the holiday weekend and built a yellow oblisk for the garden. We had planted a small circular garden several weeks ago, the first vegetable garden I’ve had in nearly thirty years! Jim has never grown vegetables. But now that he likes to cook and eat them, he is interested in learning how to identify them in the garden so he can pick them for dinner!

Since the garden is small, we needed something for the cucumbers and a tomoto vine to climb. Yes, I meant to say vine. I got one tomato plant from a grower here in Mathews (at our Farmers Market) which is said to grow a 25′ vine. Along a fence, she suggested. My circular garden doesn’t have a place for a fence. Remember yesterday’s story about the Farmers Market paintings and the fence? I need to build a tower in the garden.

The garden is located right below our deck, right in the space where we have been trying in vain to establish a lawn for several years. Every year I till up the bare earth and weeds and start over. Every year it dries up and dies off. So this year I did’t plant grass seed. This year I mounded up five raised beds; one circular in the center for the tower of cucumbers and tomato with salad greens around the edge. Then four quadrants with paths between them around the circle.

I found it refreshingly new to design something symmetrical for once! One bed for strawberries, another for tomatoes, one with rows of peppers, bok choy and green beans and one with summer squash. It took all weekend to finish the oblisk, mostly because we choose yellow for its’ color. A spray can of primer, another of yellow, then two coats of yellow enamel brushed on to make the color pop.

Jim worked on the finial, turning it with the lathe then sealing it and leafing it with copper leaf. Then he applied one of his patinas to turn it bluish. It’s been a long time since we created something together just for fun. I notice his hands as he reaches across mine to nail the lath in place. Tender and dear to me, I remember this feeling from some time long ago. Not sure when. Not all the years we worked the art shows together, longer than that. Perhaps the first days of our marriage when we created the glass fired screens together.

The imagery on the screens from twenty years ago is strangely similar to the paintings I made yesterday in the garden … somewhat abstract … delicate colors … fragments of familiar shapes … not unlike the abstract landscapes I did in pastel in the late 70s! How odd.

I wonder if I have photographs of those paintings? … Under the Crookneck … Twins … a diptych of tomatoe plants with one panel mirroring the other, the same composition with different colors, different patterns of light and dark. I painted them long before I had twins. Yet my twin sons have turned out to be strikingly similar to the painting … identical genetics … with different patterns of likes and dislikes … one a team builder with tremendously innovative software writing abilities … the other a guy who quit his dream job and sold his house to go back to school and get his PhD. Writing this, I see my descriptions are more about me than them!

In many ways I am the twins painting. Gemini, yes. A mirror of myself, painting and writing, startling myself each time I dare look into the mirror of them and catch a glimpse of my true self. Somewhere along my path, I quit my dream job and sold my house. If this were a dream, a house represents where my spirit dwells. Somewhere, years ago, I quite painting the stuff in my own backyard. Like Dorothy, I too followed a yellow brink road to the edge until there was nothing left to do but jump.

Not jump off, jump in. Into my own life and dreams once again. I fall asleep on the couch and sleep through The Mentalist. Jim wakes me to go to bed and now I can’t sleep. I lay awake tossing and turning … thoughts and images flooking through my steam of consciousness ... offer the print version of the Daily Painting Journal as a printable download … week by week … story by story … a few dollars each. You can still offer them printed as well … use the Lulu.com store to handle sales and shipping for you so you are free to do the paintings and dreams.

Produce … Let it run and produce? I have been the one running and producing for years … I am over it … doing what I think other may want or be interested in … only to find out they’re not. What’s the point? I may as well do what I want! Like spending the weekend with Jim making an oblisk for the cucumbers in my garden. It’s been a long time … and it’s good to be home!

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