Last month, it was road trip time. Kevin Menck and I loaded up in his trusty chevy and headed east. Not really knowing what we were going to paint, but also not really caring. Just the excitement of a new place to explore was enough to get me fired up. Atlantic Beach, NC was the destination.
The first day was kind of a day of exploring. We were able to get a couple of keepers. Late in the day we met up with a fabulous local painter, Jimmy Craig Womble. He took care of us for the rest of the week. Great guy and we had a blast hangin' with him. Dude knows everybody in that town. I couldn't remember his name for the first day or two so, we referred to him as Jimmy Crack Corn.
Each day we seemed to explore a bit farther north each day. Radio Island was covered in some awesome old boats in disrepair. It was like a big chop shop for big fishing boats. Being from the hills of Tennessee, this was all new to me. Beaufort, was a modern, sophisticated kind of town. Great food. There were several great little harbors spattered up highway 70. Davis has a great little coffee shop, Davis Provisions. But, I think without doubt the spot for the week was at the end of highway 70. It was a bustling local harbor in Atlantic. As soon as the locals realized we were not with the fish and game, they opened up. Great people. We made off with some good paintings and great memories. Oh yeah, Kevin scored a big bag of oysters too.
Oh well, Here are a few of the paintings from the trip. Great place to explore.
I love those boat paintings. My favorite is the upper left one in the set of 4. On all of them I like the sparsely handled foreground. The bottom two boats have pleasantly unexpected composition. The network of posts and rigging is crisp and readable, and still allow the boat to take precedence, when it would be so easy to make a tangled mess of it all.
ReplyDeleteHey Jason! Sorry I haven't talked with you in a while. Hope all is well with you! The paintings turned out great!
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