The Get-away, Time to Put Away the Art Practice (for 12 days)

Wake of the ferry from Wood's Hole to Martha's Vineyard

When I am on a get-away I seldom spend much time making art, unless I'm at a workshop. I always bring a sketch pad, pens and colored pencils, and I have a number of sketchbooks that contain many travel scenes from the past. However, I live and breathe art making and art business in my every day life, and I relish it.  For now, when I travel I seek to quiet my mind, to give myself permission to taste and see my surroundings, and be in the moment of what I am experiencing. As much as I am grateful for each far away scene I have drawn, I am just as happy for the experience of stepping into the now and drinking it all in. 

I struggle in leaving home, leaving my art projects, all the ideas for a painting that I want to give shape and substance, and everyone who I want to reach and share it with. I left it all in trade for my vacation. "Taste and see" were the words that I heard from my muses. I tasted plenty . . . lobster rolls, lobster prepared different ways, truly, I got lobstered-out, fun food, like onion rings, haddock, just off the pier, a highly under rated, delicate fish, the affable Bostonian accent that I first  heard from John F. Kennedy as a child. Licorice, not the rope variety, but the little shaped kind that you buy at the shore, or in this case, the Cape, Cape Cod. We went just before the summer season opened, so it was not crowded, and still pretty chilly, but beautiful. Quiet, vast, unfilled space, only the sea and the sand in my view. Long walks in the  sand, sand everywhere, sticking to shoes and clothing, sweeping it out of the bed sheets. How fortunate I am for this kind of time, this restoring and nourishing time and with wonderful company.

modernist oil paintings, color explorations in oil