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Atlantic Crossing Summer 1994
In May of 1994 we left Block Island RI on the first leg of our transatlantic passage. We sailed south, hoping to make our fifth trip by sail to Bermuda. After a seven day calm passage, we arrived in good spirits and spent three weeks in port, steeling our nerves to leave. Our first port of call was the mid-Atlantic chain of Portuguese islands, the Azores, 1800 miles away. In October we settled into life in a big marina west of Almeria, Spain, called Almerimar. It was here that I undertook to improve my first efforts by learning more systematically about watercolor. I was reluctant to simply learn techniques - as far as I am concerned artists develop techniques out of a desire to get at some meaning, and too often, watercolorists are instead paralyzed by technique. I followed my own advice, and began to copy. I had foolishly failed to invest in good paper, high quality brushes and watercolors, or even a plastic palette. But I had invested in a big book of Winslow Homer watercolors, and I retreived it from its perch behind my pillow and began to copy his images.
He is a man after my own heart - one hundred years after he painted them, his pieces still inspire, and his economical but highly informed drawing and color are still dashing. He, too, traveled to the Caribbean and Bermuda, and he painted boats, worked in swamps and rivers, watched sponge divers at work and children playing games on lawns. I absorbed his knowledge of the medium as best I could. My "studio" was a corner of an unused section of the harbor, behind a tall concrete wall, safe from prying eyes or other distractions.
but I was unprepared for the enormous spaces of sky and sea, or the forms of trees and boats, or the whole question of composing with a view to crystallizing the vision. |
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