Emerald Isle 24×36 Acrylic on Canvas (sold)
‘Tis sunset: to the firmament serene,
The Atlantic wave reflects a gorgeous scene;
Broad in the cloudless west a belt of gold
Girds the blue hemisphere; above, unroll’d.
The keen clear air grows palpable to sight,
Imbodied in a flush of crimson light.
Dipp’d in the hues of sunset, wreath’d in zones,
The clouds are resting on their mountain-thrones;
One peak alone exalts its glacier crest,
A golden paradise, above the rest;
Thither the day with lingering steps retires,
And in its own blue element expires.
- James Montgomery
There are times when I look at a Carolina coast sunset and think, “If I were to paint exactly what I see at this very moment, no one would ever believe it to be real.” The drama can look surreal – almost as though a photographer deliberately saturated the scene with color to enhance his image. The wondrous thing about a sunset is that each are unique. You will never see the same sunset or color combination twice. And before you can blink, the vista changes as the sun continues to set with each passing moment. Every imaginable color and hue of nature’s pallet can radiate across the late afternoon sky. Sunset colors are typically more brilliant and more intense than sunrise colors, since there are generally more atmospheric particles in the evening air than in the morning air.
As a child, my mother used to tell me that when people died and went to heaven she believed they were each given a special job. She claimed to have lacked artistic talent and said she could barely etch out a stick figure. So, she wanted her job in heaven to be an artist - a painter of sunsets. With each glorious sunset I think of my mother. I imagine her having a playful smile as she stands upon the skyline with a gigantic, well-worn paintbrush. Magically, she spreads her brush above the ocean, perhaps a bit reminiscent of Disney’s animated Tinkerbell leaving a trail of twinkling pixie dust across Cinderella’s castle, but in my case – the evening sky. My mother sprinkles kaleidoscopic color across the sky to blaze an afterglow of the day’s sun which illuminates the mountainous and wispy cloud formations with even more color.
The reflection of her day’s work dances across the waves and incoming tide - almost as a reminder that another day glimmers just beyond the distant horizon.
