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I’ve recently posted 8 new CURIOUS PAINTINGS on my website. All bright, colorful and reminiscent of a bright and colorful Summer.
My new stuff continues my focus on focusing. I’d collected this particular shell on one of our many journeys to Crane Beach, or more probably in this shell’s instance to ajoining Steep Hill Beach, and brought it home to use as what, an ashtray? Nope, don’t smoke. Could take up smoking, in hopes of not totally wasting the boat trip to the beach, but probably not a good idea. It’s a fairly small shell and, once filled with cigarrette ash, what do I do, go back to the beach for more shells? Could be a problem during the winter months when the river freezes over and boat access is reduced.
So, having narrowly avoided adding another addiction to my collection, I returned to focusing on focus. Hyper-render the aquamarine/blue shell as if it were still sitting beachside in bright sunlight, add a subtle shadow to reinforce its quietness and trap it within an intense, contrasting gold ochre field to pop it out even further.
Viola! Whaddya got? A watercolor painting of an empty ashtray!!! Makes you want to smoke, just to give that damn empty shell something to do. Sublime!
So again, it was a quiet summer; lots of sun and no storms. I’ll bet this afforded the local seashells plenty of time to sit serenely while surveying the seacoast.
More serenity at my CURIOUS PAINTINGS collection.
I’ve just completed a watercolor of a PURPLE BEACH MUSSEL. With a WITHERED ORANGE ACCENT just to confuse the whole thing. This after a relatively quiet summer on Crane Beach; lots of sun but no storms to toss up big, weird seashells, scary seaweed collections or the unfortunately usual collection of broken bottles, used toasters and old lightbulbs.
Wade through more beach jetsam and flotsam at my collection of CURIOUS PAINTINGS.
While I’m not claiming to have found this seashell in the woods (that would’ve been SOME high tide,) with its surface mottled with moss greens and browns, I thought it would fit well with the other forresty stuff I’d collected last Fall. COLD OLD & ROUND because it was DAMN COLD, I’m OLD and the shells are ROUND. Or I’m ROUND, not sure.
More nonsense at my website of CURIOUS PAINTINGS.
Asked to choose a single, simple phrase to describe the Summer of ’09, a local duck replied “Too much damn RAIN!” Yet despite Boston’s weather behaving more like Seattle’s, there have been moments of sunshine, even heat. The day I captured this Hot Summer Seaweed (“captured” only in a manner of speaking, it wasn’t actually trying to escape) was a scorcher, with the sun punishing anything left up on the beach.
For more tales of seashore outrage, be sure to visit my collection of CURIOUS PAINTINGS.
Lame word-associations aside, I found this large, old mussel washed up mid-way down Crane Beach in April of ’09. Must’ve been a fair-sized storm, or full moon high tide at least, to have dredged this monster up. Similar to an earlier piece of seaweed, it’s so ugly it ‘s got to be considered beautiful. Respected, at least, for its age and its scars.
I just hope it didn’t follow me home. Where more CURIOUS PAINTINGS live.
Summer has made a few feints into New England already this Spring, enabling me to get out onto local Crane Beach to see what’s up. Along with the usual beach remodeling rendered by the winter weather – resulting in my totally and humiliatingly beaching my boat on a sand bar that hadn’t been there the previous season – I was surprised by a bright Blue Shell on Brown Beach. Seeming more tropical than we, and the absolutely frigid local waters, deserved, I saw this as my first invitation to the local party referred to as Summer.
For more festival remnants, visit my collection of CURIOUS PAINTINGS. You’ll find Laughing Clamshells, Ribbon Candy and, of course, Broken Bottles.
I’m happy to note that the ice on the Ipswich River broke some weeks back and things appear to have returned to some liquidity. Hard experience has taught me to expect at least 1 more sneaky winter storm, which will return everything back into a state of icy, mid-January perpetual blackness, but I can hope. I can’t trust New England weather but I can hope.
Amongst all the other warm weather items to be anticipated – Red Sox, lawns with more weeds than grass and old house-painting amongst them – I look forward to adding to my collection of broken bottles, seaweed, laughing clamshells, crabs and beach peanuts.
Visit my collection of watercolor Curious Paintings to view even more stuff.
Summer brings opportunity to wander the beach without having to wrap oneself up in layers of survival gear. There are other reasons to look forward to June, but not having to strain to hear the ocean above the crackling and crunching of multiple thinsulate/polyester/microfiber skins – all named after distant mountain ranges I’ve never heard of – makes it easier to enjoy the experience.
Another benefit is the light, never still as it skips across assorted surfaces, revealing and obscuring details, infuriating those of us anal-rententive enough to try and capture it.
. . . to my online portfolio of Curious Paintings. This is a detail from “Crane Beach Splashing Clamshell,” from the summer of 2008.
Curious Paintings by Brian Cody 