Dedication is making art even when you're at the beach on a rare sunny week in the dead of winter. I took a small box of compost papers and the bare necessities for making collages... my glue pot, scissors, a stencil a stamp pad and a single set of alphabet stamps... just enough toys to play with but not so much that it felt like work. We were in a condo perched high above the Pacific in Depoe Bay, Oregon where the water is wild and the rocky coast is dangerous, and where sandy beaches are few and far between. We did find a lovely little state park at Fogerty Creek where one parks on the east side of Hwy. 101 and walks west, under the highway and alongside the creek and finally out onto the sand... quite large grains of sand that looks like tiny rocks.
An excursion to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport was a highlight and I went nuts photographing the underwater sea life. I love jelly fish and got some good photos but had more fun in the transparent tunnel where one can walk through the water and experience fish swimming all around. I wasn't successful in photographing leopard shark but I'll remember their patterns for future use in a painting.
One of the first things I did after we checked into our condo was to take all my papers out of the box and choose the colors that might best serve me for the one piece I wanted to do; I put the rest back into the box for another time. Once I was set up I knew I would dabble now and then and get some work done during our down times. Here's a photo of my dear husband who good-naturedly found a tiny space on the table where he could eat breakfast.
We did some beach walking, lots of driving and sightseeing, ate most meals out (I don't cook on vacation if I can get away with it.), read a lot, and stared at the sea, mesmerized by the rhythm of the waves and enthralled by the sounds of the waves and sea spray. It was LOUD there on the edge of the continent, and so peaceful. At the shore I often feel the a sense of the ocean down deep in my core, calming me, filling me with a quiet joy.
I nibbled at making my art, working first thing in the morning one day, all afternoon another day, and now and again until yesterday it was finished. The art part is simple... 3 main pieces of paper, 2 painted ones and one solid color, but it took quite awhile to settle on the composition and those 3 pieces. I have had the experience of just tossing down some papers and have it work without much effort but that usually doesn't happen, nor did it this week. So here's the result.... Optimistic.
