RMW Ramblings

  22 June 2021 CRABS & SUCH 3. NOT REALLY CRABS   "Horseshoe Crab" is a 8 x 10 inch acrylic on canvasboard depicting the so-called living fossil Limulus polyphemus, which we can see on the shores of the brackish reaches of the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, and elsewhere on the Atlantic Coast. Not a crab, and more closely related to spiders, it's a fascinating creature that's been around for millennia, swimming upside down, sporting seven eyes, and with blue blood rather than red. The oxygen transport in the horseshoe's blood is the copper metalloprotein  hemocyanin rather then the iron metalloprotein hemoglobin that most of the animal world depends on.  Think iron rust red, copper tarnish blue. Read up on him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_crab#Harvest_for_blood. Then there are the seriously dead and extinct trilobites, one of which I painted in "Before Adam."  They are also not closely related to crabs, but have a similar shape. I dug up...

  19 June 2021 CRABS & SUCH 2  FANTASTIC CRABS + "Pale Crab" is a 10 x 8 in acrylic on canvasboard, continues as a whimsy with exaggerated eyes. In a Photoshop copy, I abstracted him from the background, flipped him, and produced this T-shirt for daughter Betsy.     Last Summer during the Covid isolation I did several paintings to fit thrift store frames,  "Guardian" is another fantasy crab, guarding a submerged treasure. There are some three dimensional elements here.     I filled another found frame with a fictional non-crab denizen, "Chessie, the Chesapeake Bay sea monster. Next time we will do some real, but not really crabs.

18 June 2021 CRABS & SUCH 1 Growing up trapping, shelling, and eating crabs at Fenwick Island, Delaware,  I quickly connected with the Maryland crab culture when we acquired a cottage on a branch of the Chesapeake Bay.  I have since painted several crabs and crablike creatures, ranging from realistic to fantasy.  "Chesapeake Blue Crab" is an unadorned representation that I painted along with a few native Chesapeake Bay fish for a gallery show. Buried in our cottage on Carpenters Point is a hidden crab on a hidden painting. "Mermaid" is painted on a panel on the inside of a transom door that accesses the upper reaches of a tall, shallow closet I built in our kitchen.   The all too human mermaid is plunging toward two crabs in the corner of this painting amidst an ecosystem of fantastical flora and fauna. When daughter Betsy and husband Brad acquired their own summer home, she requested a large painting on rough burlap to hang over their mantle.  He is more ...

  12 June 2021 REVERSE STENCILING MARY'S COTTAGE CRAFTS Our cottage has several items that Mary has decorated by a technique she devised that I call "reverse stenciling."  She pins, tapes, or weighs down leaves, flowers, etc., and spray paints over them.  It's similar to using a frisket in watercolor to preserve the white of the paper. For the cushions grouped above for a family portrait, Mary first sewed the covers from solid color Sunbrella outdoor fabric, dark red, blue, green.  After pinning on her flora she spritzed on short bursts of metallic paint, silver, copper, gold. The pillows migrate around our front porch as needed.   Mary first used this technique to decorate the plain lid of a simple Ikea storage chest, covering the entire lid with matte black paint over weighted-on leaves.  In the bathroom is a panel on which Mary spot sprayed several different paints, affixed her selection of cuttings, then over-sprayed in matte black.  In the living ...

11 June 2021 SOMETIMES THE LIGHT IS PERFECT LIDO KEY     There are times when the light is perfect for photography.  The advantage of a digital camera, even a decent cell phone camera, is that you can indulge in taking multiple shots, changing the exposure, zoom, orientation.  One evening at Lido Key Beach, Sarasota, was one of those occasions. Standing in the water I snapped off several.  These are a selection.       Even a blurry shot has a certain impressionistic appeal.             

  10 June 2021 OBIDA LAST VISIT    My grandparents had a small cottage on an isolated dune at Fenwick Island, DE. There were no near neighbors, no utilities, a pump for water outside, and an outhouse with a seat over a bucket.  I loved it.  The cottage, Obida, washed away in the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962. (https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/delaware/ash-wednesday-storm-de/).  My last visit there was in the summer of 1960. just before I left for graduate school in California.  During the Covid-19 lock-down I did a set of paintings, Last Visit I & II .   The two similar frames were thrift store finds on different occasions. This style of frame is sometimes called Adirondack or Black Forest.  They were popular around the turn of the 20th century.  I pick up interesting bargain frames and see what painting they inspire.

  2 June 2021 WHEN MICKEY MET BETTY   Today is the 85th wedding anniversary of my late parents. A few years ago I did a painting based on the story of how they met.   In the summer of 2013 I ran across an obituary for Ninalee Craig, the 23 year old subject of the well known Ruth Orkin photograph "An American Girl in Italy." This photo is a favorite of mine and I keep a digital copy in my computer files...   This brought back the memory of Dad's story of how he met Mom in 1936, which in turn immediately inspired my painting “When Mickey Met Betty.” Dad told the story of standing by the newsstand in the center of Chester, PA chatting with a friend in the spring of 1936 when he heard the click clack of heels and spotted a young girl approaching, Mary Elizabeth McAteer. His friend seemed to know her, and Michael "Mickey" Walsh, was immediately smitten. He commented (at least in his imaginative memory), “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.” He bribed his...