Last week I drove over a thousand miles from here, the Midwest, to the east coast -- the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the town of Duck, just north of Kitty Hawk. The temperature was about 15 to 20 degrees warmer, the price of gas about 50 to 60 cents cheaper and the Southern accent just delightful. In between was some good road food and some bad road food -- and lots of road kill, but that's another story. My wife had taken a walk along the beach and told me to watch out for the waves, so by the time I set up away from the range of the waves inshore, I thought I was safe. I had a block-in going when all of a sudden I was knee deep in the ocean and my paint box was quickly floating away. I ran -- that is, RAN!!! after my paint box and bag with extra canvases. I managed to catch up with them to save them (filled with water by now), but lost about $40 to $50 dollars worth of paint. I lost a tube of Cadmium Red, White, Cobalt Blue, Alizarin, Ultramarine and Cadmium Yellow. I watched as they sank into the sand and after that I have no idea where they went as wave after wave hit the shore. I just hope The Nature Conservancy wasn't watching. I worked on the sketch I had going for a while, but since I was rather bummed out, I packed up and left. I didn't touch the oils until the next afternoon. I've posted a picture of the spot I was working, the evil sea and a pencil drawing I did of one of the shore birds while sitting on the beach in the post-trauma afternoon. There's a lesson to be learned there somewhere. The sea is a powerful thing -- it drove me inside -- I am re-reading Moby Dick.
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