Feel the Frustration (and do it anyway)

Easter Sunrise over Atlantic Beach

How lovely to sit expectantly at the edge of the sea, watching the sky change colors every moment as the sun rises out of the ocean. How exciting to wait for the perfect moment to begin painting. How breathtaking, inspiring and frustrating!

I realized on this Easter morning that each day, I attempt the impossible. I get up before dawn, try to accurately time my arrival at the beach, find the perfect parking spot, ready my paint box, mix the colors I predict will appear in the sky and wait for the perfect moment to begin painting. I feel the thrill of each color as it appears in the morning sky and transforms into another color before my eyes. Within 15 minutes the sky turns from indigo to bright white daylight, displaying every color in the rainbow (some that I can't even identify: Pinkey-orange? Bluish-yellow?) as the sun makes it's way over the horizon. Clouds appear, transform, change color and are blown away as others take their place. It's a phantasmagoria! How can I even attempt to paint that?

It's enough to make me want to give up this silly endeavor. Who can paint the sky as it changes from second to second? Not me! Better painters than I have attempted it - who do I think I am?

Every day I want to give up! It seems like a dumb idea to start the day with an activity that makes you feel like a failure before you've even begun and it feels like hubris to even attempt it.

I could take a gorgeous photograph each morning, come home to my cozy studio and work from that. I could take hours to duplicate what was in the sky at one particular moment. I could, but where's the challenge, where's the thrill in that?

I know some of my skyscapes are decent paintings; when I get them home and am not comparing them to the actual sky, I even like some of them. But none of them even begin to capture what is in front of my eyes each morning as I survey what God is creating. I feel His effortlessness, the ease with which He creates, His grace. He breathes the sky into being.

God paints with light - my paints are made from earthly pigments - from dirt. How can light be painted with dirt? How can colors made from dirt ever approach colors made from light?

The gap between this effortlessness and my struggle is a chasm I cannot bridge.
It is the gap between God's perfection and my imperfection.

When I was younger, I had a theory: that when artists die and go to Heaven, they get to take turns creating the sunrises and sunsets. Sometimes, I think I can identify whose turn it was today. Monet paints the soft, fuzzy, pastel skies. Van Gogh and Gaughin the more colorfully dramatic.

I want to paint with a thought, a breath, by pointing a finger and sweeping it across the sky to paint orangey-pink clouds on an azure sky.I like to imagine it will be that easy when its my turn to paint from a Heavenly vantage point.

Until then, I won't give up. I'll struggle with my earthly pigments as I continue to be amazed, awed and humbled before Heavenly events.


Carry on, fellow artists, carry on.

Early Morning Skies

 Greetings fellow art lovers who live under the sky.

Of all the habits that I nurture - the good ones and the not-so-good, 

Getting Up at 6 am to Paint the Sky 
is my current favorite.

I admit that each morning when my phone alarm starts its insistent chirping in the dark, I reconsider my decision, but I get up anyway because a week of painting just 30 minutes each morning has taught me so much.


I've learned that creativity doesn't require gobs of time! Painting the sky as it brightens up to create the day is a self-limiting endeavor.

At 6 am it's still dark. By 7 am the show is over and I'm done!


I learned that painting is what I'm here to do. Every cell in my body does a happy dance while the sky puts on a show, taunting me to paint faster - that cloud won't be there in a few seconds and that rosy orange will turn to aquamarine.

 I've learned to paint fast and in the dark. 


I've learned an easy way to practice what I preach - that to nurture your creativity, you must create something every day.


They say a habit, good or bad, takes about 21 days to form. I'm looking forward to the next 14 days, and I don't want to miss the show.

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.