Morning on the Vineyard

The beauty of a clear summer morning on Martha's Vineyard is something I am still impressed with after all these years. The clarity of light and the crispness of color are like etchings in my mind's eye, that fortunately returns in a blink of reflection. Joe Steele and I arrived here, in Oak Bluffs, yesterday in our two car caravan from our home in Claverack. This year we decided to bring up all the artwork for the show at Cousen Rose Gallery, beginning on August 16th, in a separate car. This way the shipping costs were eliminated, and we could oversee the transport of the work ourselves. When the option presents itself to personally transport work to galleries rather than ship it, I prefer the former for those reasons.

Today will begin with the preparations for a commissioned oil painting of a beautiful young woman, a student from Wesleyan, who is visiting the island at the same time. The setting for the painting will be outdoors, as to complement her natural beauty with the nature here. It has been in recent years that I have started to marry my skills as a landscape artist with my abilities to paint beautiful women. I am unsure as to why it has taken so many years to bring these two sides of myself together but I am enjoying the results, and so do many viewers.

Attached today is an oil painting entitled "Blue Flamenco", which is the last painting I had completed in this series for the showing here.

Later this evening, we will attend the Martha's Vineyard Festival, which guarantees to be a great show because one of my favorite singers of all time, Gladys Knight, will be performing. The concert will be particularly refreshing because it is being held outdoors in Ocean Park, an ocean front community that borders a park that overlooks the Nantucket Sound.