Morning Adventures

 6:15 to 6:30 am

6:30 to 6:45 am

Did you ever have a big adventure from 6:15 to 6:45 am?

Ever the early riser, I’m often at my desk checking email before dawn. I sip coffee and watch the day begin outside the picture window. I can see a swatch of sky over the house across the street and most mornings I gaze at it sleepily and say to myself, “that’s so pretty – look how fast the sky changes – I should paint that…”

During the Painting the Region: Color the Coast Paintout last fall, my artist pals, Kelly Medford, Elizabeth Ferber and I had the best of the painter’s world – a house on the beach. Each morning for a week, we woke before dawn, scrambled to set up our easels in the dark, and painted from the porch as the sun came up over the Atlantic Ocean. The wind whipped our nightgowns and hair around and at times blew the canvas right off the easels! We painted furiously as the sky changed colors right before our eyes. No fancy mixing of just the right hues – no plotting and planning the composition – just reacting with our paint and brushes to the scene before us, laughing and painting in the darkness. It was a great adventure.

The paintout ended, the artists went home and I went back to work. Each morning I remember how much fun we had that week. I gaze at the sky over the house across the street and bemoan the fact that since I have a job teaching others to paint and draw (poor me!) I don’t have time to paint.

This morning, instead of sleepily watching that patch of sky, sighing and wishing that my life were that exciting more often, I did something about it. I painted that sky – twice. Two paintings in the space of thirty minutes!

The sky outside my window changes colors as I paint – a beautiful and inspiring challenge. Hold on – that pink wasn’t there a second ago!

No more excuses – I am a painter and I shall paint. I’ll keep the adventure alive in my heart. Stay tuned for the results - a peek at the skies over Jacksonville while the sun is rising.