Sarasota, Florida: Awesome place to paint!
Boats, Sarasota Bay 10×8″ oil on panelThis was painted yesterday in Sarasota with a group of painters who got together to paint by the bay. This last week here has just been fabulous and a great opportunity for learning, growth and meeting new people. (and not to mention the weather here is fantastic and the landscape just gorgeous).This week I had a new challenge. I was in a workshop with Marc Hanson where we were learning to take our field studies and turn them into larger studio paintings. I learned a lot about myself in this process, and not all of it wonderful… I’m not including a picture of my studio painting, it was not a success, but I really saw how important it is to have the vision of the painting and then to take the time on location to work out the values, drawing, what I really want to include (or edit out), and to take my time and do that, otherwise there isn’t enough information for the larger studio painting. This in and of itself is an invaluable lesson. I felt a little frantic, like I didn’t have enough painting time to really work out the painting, so even though I learned a lot about the process I wasn’t able to produce a successful studio painting. Now I am really excited to use the whole process that I learned with Marc and to take the time on location to make the studies needed to take with me into the studio.
Sunset, Wild Oak Bay 7×11″ oil on panelOutside of the workshop I did get some other painting in and have been throughly enjoying painting in Sarasota. This was painted as the sun was setting and was so awing and inspiring: these are the moments I really enjoy and live for in painting. As the sun is setting the light is changing by the minute, and just the silence and all that sky and water with just me, my friend Susie, the birds and us with our easels, we seemed so small capturing such a big moment.. well, there’s no real way to describe the experience but awesome and I felt lucky just to have the opportunity to be out there.I’ll be painting out in the wilds outside Sarasota for the rest of the week and am really looking forward to sharing what I produce with you, it’s beautiful, wild and full of gators, exciting!You can see more work (as I couldn’t bombard you with everything that I’ve painted here) on my website here. You can also see a few larger paintings that I’m finishing up under the heading works in progress.Thank you again for your interest in my work and I’ll keep you posted on my adventures. For the second half of June I’ll be painting in Alaska with a small group of friends and just can’t wait to see what kind of paintings we will be doing there..In the meantime I’ll be indulging in the Florida landscape with it’s bugs, burning sun and gators!