Shell series No. 2
23.5 x 22”
Watercolor on Saunders Waterford paper
2nd Place WC - 2014 Duxbury Winter Show
When I was a child, I wanted so badly to see seashells. They were intricate and beautiful and full of mystery, so my first experience on Los Angeles’ overpicked shore at age seven was a disappointment. Clamshells. Nothing but identical clamshells, two or three of them.
Cape Cod, years later. The winter beaches are deserted. Windswept and severe at times, they make wonderful places for solitary thought; they offer up gifts. Irene is a thinker, an acceptor and giver of gifts. It was in her wonderful, whimsical yard that I saw my first basketful of shells, and I was right. Seashells are full of mystery. They pull me to paint the way callas do. Looking deep into the the shell's spiral, thinking about the ageless ocean taking a shell and making such beauty out of it pulled me back and back into time.
Come with me. Explore the shell's gifts; consider the cosmos and the continuity of life.
