Fort Mose in St Augustine is such a beautiful place to walk, birdwatch, and paint. I painted there yesterday, and I'm still shaking my head in wonder that I have such a beautiful place so nearby, where I can sit on a dock and paint - mostly undisturbed because so few people seem to know about the place. This photo is of the island rookery in the marsh, nesting ground for great blue herons, woodstorks, and migratory birds - no two legged access permitted. You see them swooping in and out, calling and carrying in nest building material.The marsh is flat and vast, panoramic. Shapes don't emerge individually, they merge and interconnect. This challenges my artist brain to find an intersection that translates to a small rectangle of paper. The water is brackish and tidal - of a color that is hard to name, harder to paint. "What color is that?" I ask myself. Is it grey? Brown? Blue, like the sky above which it reflects? No. None of those..If I can't even name it, can I hope to mix it?
This won't be my first attempt at painting the marshes, but it will be my first successful attempt, if it happens. Which, as usual for me, means a lucky visitation by the muse..
Whatever the end result, painting cleans off my soul - says she, dramatically! But after much struggle and a sense of impending failure, I came up with this - and I feel good about it:
