
Going With The Flow
…
A “Navy Brat”, I spent my childhood at the beach. I think it’s why I’m magnetically drawn to paint it now.
I race through cleaning up the breakfast mess and make sure my husband has plenty of coffee and “reading” material because I’ve got an ocean scene calling my artist’s imagination. Have I mentioned I’ve painted stacks of paintings, many of them ocean scenes. Not all good. Some ok. All still in a learning stage for me.
As I paint, my husband and I usually chat about what he’s looking at in the paper. He thinks he knows the people in the pictures, he’s been in business with them, his mind is delusionally entertwined with them. Mostly I say “Oh, is that right,” and “Wow I didn’t know that”, faking a tone to allow him to continue there. I know he just likes the talking and the time.
I put a live ocean scene on YouTube loud enough so I can feel like I’m there and so I can study the light hitting all the places light hits, glowing, refracting, being deflected and diffused, causing shadows.
Sometimes when I paint, I wax a little poetic… I didn’t want to title this one because it would mess up the tip of the wave… so it is
An
Ode
to the
Ocean:
a melody
and a dance.
Waves prance,
in lacy edge dress,
seagulls squawk soprano,
starkly accompanying the sea.
And there am I, a party to the scene,
only in my mind through the power of TV.
~ Julie Robinson
…
As all of this “excitement” is raging, my husband gets up to return to his second love, Turner Classic Movies. First he looks at my painting and says, as always, “Another ocean”. I try not to be deflated by the flat dementia tone that I know he has entirely no control over.
And he leaves me at my painting to go watch Turner Classic Movies.