Yesteryear's Sunsets Today

Sunset at Bar Neck Cove, oils on canvas, 14" x 11" $150

As toddlers in Cuba, my mother initiated my sisters and I into the ritual of seeing the sunset by the sea. Every evening as the sun started to descend we would walk the block from our house in Miramar to what we called la playita (the little beach) though it was really the farthest thing from a beach. Actually a rocky shoreline made up of the dead corals commonly called dientes de perro (dog's teeth) in Cuba, we children would while away the time playing in the tidal pools and pause to watch the final dramatic moments as the sun dipped into the sea. Every day we watched intently to see if the legendary "green ray" would appear: an unusual phenomenon that occurs once in a great while when the light of the sun's rays is refracted through the water.

The sea would be furious, foaming froth in January when the Nor'easters blew, strewing Man-of-War jellyfish with their long poisonous tentacles onto to the rocks, and we'd play tag with the spray from the waves. On lazy summer days it could be so calm we'd be tempted to go in for a swim and only the grownups' cautionary tales of the many eaten by sharks at that spot would keep us out of the water. The light on the clouds projected marvelous images of castles, epic battles, and beasts to fill our imagination.

I cherish those memories now as the sum of all my childhood sunsets--it was not until much later I realized: while I played, I was being imprinted with a sense of nature's timeless beauty that would form the ground for my artistic impulse. Who could have known a few years later we'd have to leave Cuba and never see our Playita again?

Sunsets on the Chesapeake Bay have a very different flavor, but they share the same enchantment of the clouds and sun over the water. Bar Neck Cove on Tilghman Island is the site of Walt Bartman's Summer Duck Studio where we painted. It was hard to find a spot where the glare wouldn't be blinding, so I picked this place behind a tall cypress. The reflections on the water were still so strong I had to close my eyes and rest for periods of time to get rid of the retinal after-images. I wasn't sure exactly what I had painted until the next day, but oddly enough, the painting communicates the heat and the hazy atmosphere of the day in the intimacy of the small cove.