Waves of Mercy and Grace

Yesterday was a perfect day—warm and bright. At noon, I took a break and walked with my posse. First time in weeks we’ve all walked together, because the weather has been atrocious.

The sky was a lovely cornflower blue. Of course even a perfectly clear sky isn’t uniformly blue. Today it was most intense over Jennifer’s house, edging to a softer blue to the south. The horizon softened to a pale tone. It was the perfect sky for my painting.

I generally mix three different colors for any object: light, medium and dark. A simple blue sky is no exception to that rule.

I set out intending to paint the Maine coast, but it turns out it’s a painting of Australia. The three little boys in this painting are my cousin’s kids, with whom I spent a magical day climbing on rocks. The sea is the color of the Indian Ocean, not the North Atlantic. Painting it gave me a mighty hankering to go back there.