vaporetti confetti

jgl

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads, 18 May, 2020, oil on canvas board, 30 X 25 cm

This was the first of two pictures done the other night. I arrived a little late so I needed to set up in a hurry. A marvellous pink sky was unfolding over a cloud bank sitting on the horizon while still holding rays of the setting sun behind me. Sometimes, I really do have to catch my breath in front of such beauty. I can feel like an adolescent in love for the first time, each time. 

I made this in about ten minutes which seems absurd to me now when I write about it. But I understand the pace which hastens the fading sky to its death while I work with the urgency of an E.R. doctor.  

As if like the rest of my life, I only seem to thrive when I am pushed to capture something when my life is on the line. Years ago, when I found myself in Venice, I would often ride a vaporetto around for hours and filling up drawing books. I would sit outside in the back where the views opened up in three directions. One has no time to think, one just makes drawings. But so often in those days I was rarely happy so I would rip them into tiny pieces and throw them into the wind like confetti.