30 x 40

Oil on Canvas

Maples Shadow Frame

These paintings are actually done from shell/seaglass/random finds and wall hangings I make after I go on vacation from things I collect on the beach when I am there. I think the happiest thing in my life might be walking the beach on a sunny day and finding a piece of sea glass or - and this is real excitement - an intact sea urchin shell or a sand dollar unbroken. But then again, I can be just as excited to spot a yellow rusted bottle cap. It is the most peaceful thing I can imagine doing and so with all the great places I have been lucky enough to visit I have a huge collection of memories, pressed into grout and hanging on my wall, to remember the moments. Flotsam is truly exciting. When the pandemic was fresh, I had to cancel a trip to the beach. For some kind of compensation, I started to do paintings of the actual assemblages of some of the beach trips I have been on and these paintings are what came out of that experience. To me they are simply abstract works, but based on objects I truly loved not once on finding or twice while making the assemblage but a third time while making these paintings.

This painting provided me hours and hours of concentration to help ease my scattered thoughts when I needed it most. I love in this piece how the painting gets more relaxed the further down the canvas I go, It was a much needed departures from my traditional work.