This painting for example was painted within 10 minutes. The sun was setting rapidly in Costa Rica so I set up and was slashing color down when this American girl came up to me. She was working at the Adventure Camp and had served us the night before... but she did not recognize me. She had obviously been indulging in some of the native plants (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)
We talked for just a minute as she realized I was with the group that had been there for a while, she thought we departed already. She told me she would love to be able to paint and thought she could pull it off. Good luck, I thought... it ain't as easy as it looks.
As we ended our conversation, which was basically her talking and me painting, she excused herself from the conversation stating that she did not want to disturb me any more. "How nice," I thought. I wish all onlookers were like that. I usually get stories about their aunt that was a painter or that they have a dog and would I like to paint said dog. I was impressed with her ability to recognize the importance of the moment and to excuse herself. We exchange pleasantries and she excused herself. What happened next was so funny that I could hardly contain myself and only wished I had witnesses. She literally stood right next to me in my peripheral vision, facing the same sunset I was and DANCED her weird Grateful Dead, Widespread panic, Phish dance. All I could think was, "didn't want to disturb me?" Luckily for me it started to rain, which chased the Sunset Dancer away and gave me a few more undisturbed moments to finish my last stokes with the knife.
Plein air is always interesting and I know that 10 days painting at the Forgotten Coast paint out next week will yield some great stories!
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| Sunset Dancer, 8x10, plein air, landscape, sunset, palette knife, $600, framed |
