All This

• A little unincorporated fishing village on a harbor in New Brunswick, Canada;

• a tiny post office and maybe two dozen homes surrounding the harbor in the village center;

• a church up on a hill;

• a bunch of lobster boats and a few big well boats used in the salmon aquaculture industry;

• no grocery store, no gas station, no laundromat, no coffee shop, no shops at all; 

• neighbor Paula, whom we met at Scotiabank on arrival day when we stopped in St. George to exchange money, driving by on her way to work, waving and calling out brightly, "Good morning!";

• the refreshment of pure fir-tree-filtered air filling my lungs;

• a Canadian flag snapping in the wind;

• dry, clear breezes dancing on my bare arms as the sun warms me; and

• a dazzling pas de milles performance of sparkles on the textured surface of the water.

… All this finds its way through sensory synapses 

and then embodies itself in my painting 

(along with a sheet of waxed sandwich paper 

saved from lunch in St. George on Friday!).

work in progress, working title: Musquash Marsh & Marks

By the Sea

This week I've parked myself directly beside the sea, on a little harbor off the Bay of Fundy. Each morning I paint in my makeshift studio on the front porch en plein mer.

makeshift studio en plein mer

Sometimes I feel at sea, getting a noseful of water, thrashing wildly.

Sometimes I feel buoyant, held up by the great grand mystery of the world as surely as I might float on a body of water—with all its attendant great grand mystery.

Today: buoyant.

work in progress

work in progress, working title: Pocologan Line & Collage