Watercolors judemann.com
STAGE I
Atlantic Crossing Summer 1994
Atantic Crossing Chart
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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.

Photo of Flight
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Our boat Flight is a 1975 Ted Hood design. She is a small sloop, only 22' long on the waterline, and in a 24 hour day she will make good 100 miles. As expected, we crossed in 18 days, after an uneventful passage. Three weeks after leaving Bermuda, we were well settled in to exploring Flores, the westernmost of the Azorean Islands.

There are no watercolors from this visit, since my first attempts were so uniformly terrible. However, the islands are intensively interesting, and we spent two months moving from island to island in company with another yacht. We then on the last leg, to arrive in mainland Europe, and spent more months exploring Portugal and Atlantic Spain before entering the Mediterranean.

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.

Copy of Homer's 'Stowing the Sail'
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Copy of Homer's 'Berry Pickers'
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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.

Marina Tower
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I produced some good work but I suffered from the oil painter's desire to have a rich, dense physical surface (watercolor is a stain) and the oil painter's process of covering and layering to achieve color and edge (watercolor is wet or dry, and the more layers you add to either one, the more murky it all becomes).

I had observed and drawn from actual spaces in the studio (curtains, glass panes and sills of windows)


Leaf Shadows on Glass
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Crazy Quilt
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Blowing Out
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Blowing In
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Brick Wall
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Sun, Leaves
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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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