St Augustine Beach Residency Day 5

Ft Matanzas National Monument Beach

8x10 inches

acrylic on canvas panel

Ft Matanzas Nature Walk

Marine Research Reserve at Marineland

Notes From My Residency

Today I was headed back south on A1A after a good breakfast at the Oasis to fortify me. I explored Ft Matanzas National Monument. The nature trail is lovely and it's my favorite place at the fort, though the gift shop and the Ft itself is also interesting. There are lovely huge trees in the parking lot, offering lots of shade. The nature trail winds up and down as a boardwalk and is diverse, with some beach scenes. In fact, it is one of the prettiest intercoastal beaches I've seen. It is pristine and sugar white.  The trail is six miles long, so I felt like I definitely got my exercise today.

I then headed on down to the Marine Research Center across the street from Marineland. It is private, but no one seemed to care that I was there. It is a strange combination of very industrial looking architecture, big parking lots with things dumped all around, cranes and such and then really beautiful palms and distant estuaries reminding me of the Ormond Loop in places. I stopped along the way to take photos.

 As I stood and looked at the vast palm hammocks across the Matanzas River, I felt both joy and despair that we have lost so much of our Florida to development. As a child, Crescent Beach was just a gas station and a few post WW2  cottages, with miles of unspoiled dunes and estuaries across the river. In college we all slept on the beach. All that is long gone, replaced by condos, and McMansions. How I wish that Florida  had the foresight to save the beach front from development and require housing to be on the west side of the road. I can only continue to support land trust organizations and paint what is left of our beautiful state, as my contribution. 

I am getting close to finishing my afternoon painting and will continue to pick at it. It is such a pleasant activity each evening from 5:30 to 7 PM.  I take my smart phone and tune it to Pandora, so I can listen to Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong etc. while I paint with a background of the waves crashing in. 

Chad and Sarah's Condo has a huge army of caretakers who spit and polish the building and the landscape almost every day. I'm impressed.

St Augustine Beach Residency Day 4

Guana Research Park

Guana Research Park

Guana Research Park

8x10 inches

acrylic on canvas

Notes From My Residency Journal

Today I drove up the coast, through St Augustine up A1A. I love the trams in the city, the Alligator Farm and the fort when I am in tourist mode. I love St Augustine Beach, but St Augustine, not so much. I can't imagine living in the city with endless tourists, carriages, trams, and tacky tourist stops. The beach town is completely different from the city. I almost always stay away from the city but I wanted to check out Vilano Beach today and that is the fastest way to get there. 

Vilano is not much to look at. I stopped at the Publix, which seems to be the main place in the town. I asked the clerk if there was anything of scenic interest there and she suggested a little park on the intercoastal side. I tried to get there but the very small parking lot was full, so no place to park. The only other parks were the usual boat ramp or ocean front with kiddie play yards. I'm sure the beach is lovely and there are plenty of McMansions in South Vilano Beach, but it wasn't a good fit for me. It seemed to have no character at all. The only thing interesting was a very weird castle looking unfinished and made of concrete? I will say that Caps on the Water is outstanding for seafood. I went there once with Chad and Sarah on a short visit. 

I decided to press on, north on A1A and found the lovely Guana Research Reserve and Park north of Vilano. This is a very interesting place which I would like to revisit in cooler weather. I got some nice photos this morning, but it was quite warm and the rain started spitting before I could do much. I want to go further down the nature trail and  take a look in the fall. 

http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/sites/gtm/

I stopped at Cafe 11 for a very good cheese omelet with croissant and fresh fruit. This is a nice little place. No atmosphere at all but the service is friendly and the food is very good.  I used to spend a lot of time there on my trip here because they have internet. Now that Chad and Sarah's Condo has Internet, I don't have to. Chad and Sarah think of everything for their guests. 

I'm still working on my 18x24 inch painting every afternoon around 6 PM out on the patio. It is really fun to do a painting this way. 

More to come.........

St Augustine Beach Residency Day 3

Anastasia State Park

8x10 inches

acrylic on canvas

Dune

5x7 inches

acrylic on panel

Camping area Anastasia State Park

Anastasia State Park

Notes From My Residency

It's a rainy drizzly day here in St Augustine, so I decided not to go very far. I visited Anastasia State Park this morning. It is a gorgeous park and much larger than I realized. I visited it about 5 years ago for a morning to paint in a cooler time. I only saw the main drag on that trip. Today I explored more of the park. The camping area is lush and beautiful, shady and roomy. The trees in this park are so lovely, ancient and twisted. I got several photos of them to use later. I was lucky to be there just at the right time to get a few photos before the rain came. There are beautiful picnic areas and quite a nice snack bar area next to the dunes. It is a perfect example of coastal Florida with tall palms and those trees, twisted by years of storms. I really loved this park and hope to go back again in cooler less humid weather to paint.

After I left the park, I treated myself to the Sunset Grille on A1A for lunch. This place is a favorite for me. I succumbed to the fried shrimp on the menu which was butterflied and huge, perfectly fried arriving crisp and hot to the table with very crispy fries. Yummy!! it was served with both tarter sauce and coctail sauce in large squeeze containers. The side was a nice salad made with crisp mixed greens, and Mandarin oranges, Sunflower seeds and dried cranberries, accompanied by chunky blue cheese dressing with a hint of garlic. Wonderful!! The service is outstanding and the atmosphere very casual, so I felt at home there as I always do. The hostess was very friendly greeting me both coming and going. A winner!!

I arrived back to the condo and painted on the patio, using my images from the morning adventure. It's so dark today that I may need to wait to continue working on my larger painting until there is more sun. Perhaps it will clear before time to paint.  I'll enjoy the Pelican Interstate in any case, around 5:30 PM. Hopefully i will get my walk around the complex again tonight. The plantings here are lovely with bright colorful Hibiscus plants and beautiful tall palms. This is a wonderful place for a vacation.

More to come.....

St Augustine Residency Day 2

Butler Park

Red Cedar

7x5 inches

acrylic on panel

Washington Oaks Palms

5x7 inches

acrylic on panel

Notes From My Residency

I slept fabulously in Chad and Sarah's Condo. This is the best condo I've stayed in at the beach, cozy and homey.

Today I explored Butler Park.It is a local park that I discovered about 7 years ago during a paint out at Crescent Beach. It is a fairly large park for fishermen and their boats, with a nice boat ramp and parking area. There are nice shade trees on the other side and it faces the inter coastal waterway. I saw quite a few water birds fishing as well. I love to find the local spots which are less formal and that have fewer visitors.

 It's a  really good place to take photos and to paint in the cooler months. There isn't much shade in the area where I want to paint. It's pretty hot this time of year and after so many years of painting outdoors, I am more careful about not getting skin cancer. I spent about a half hour there taking some really good reference photos for larger work in the studio. I did manage to get a start on a Red Cedar and finished it in the cool condo. 

In the hotter months, I like to explore a lot and then use the images on my computer screen to paint studies while I am at the residency, back at the cool place where I stay. In the cool months I love to paint on location. Actually, doing small studies and starts is the most practical way to gather as much information as possible during the residency. I take hundreds of photos to use later.  I will enjoy most of the summer, painting from the images I take this trip, later in my cool studio.

Observation is such an important part of being a landscape painter. I spend a lot of time on location just looking at trees and the land,water and sky. This observation serves me very well later in studio work.

After the park I headed for the Oasis for breakfast on A1A. It is a great breakfast place, ugly as sin, painted in swimming pool blue with yellow trim, but the food is very good, and the service friendly and good.

I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon, finishing up these studies and now will goof off for a couple of hours before I start working on the patio, continuing on my 18x24 dunes painting. About 5:30 PM, the Pelican Interstate Highway will start up. I love watching them go by in pairs or threesomes, talking about the office and which fish place they will stop off to on their way home to the family.

More to come........

St Augustine Residency Day 1

My View

Notes From My Residency

I arrived in St Augustine Beach around noon today. I happened to see a Hobby Lobby on my way, so I stopped to pick up a table top easel to use on the patio for a larger painting. I'm going to try to complete a painting of the dunes above.

I headed down to Washington Oaks State Park first, to stroll down the nature path and start my reference photos for the week. It is such a lovely park and is one of the few places with actual rocks on the beach side. There are two sides to the park, one on the inter coastal water way, dotted with small barrier islands and lovely old red cedar trees, tall palms and twisted scrub oaks. There is also a formal garden. 

On the beach side there are scads of lovely palms dotting the dunes. I got wonderful reference photos for future paintings back in the studio. One of the best things about a residency is the time to wander and discover, observing new places and remembering them with photos.

The condo is wonderful, very comfortable and spotlessly clean. It is thoughtfully decorated with original art on the walls. I enjoy seeing some of my paintings there as well. The kitchen is fully stocked with cooking utensils and modern appliances. I could live here happily for some time!! Two bedrooms and baths and a lovely patio facing the dunes. My kind of fun. It is gated for safety, so I can wander and walk anytime. The beach is just a couple of steps away too. 

More to come....

My New Residency Sponsor

Author Lucy Tobias at my recent book signing studio party for her book 

Florida Gardening Gone Wild.

Villa Lucia

A New Residency Sponsor

Meet author Lucy Tobias. I have known Lucy for some time now. She writes wonderful books about the places and subjects I love. I have a copy of her book 50 Great Walks in Florida in my studio and enjoy reading it. She has offered Villa Lucia to me for a week residency in Ocala, FL in the future. I will enjoy exploring the vintage neighborhood she lives in and the two state parks in Marion County. I'm looking forward to it.

Linda's Fair Oaks Mini Residency 05/07/12

Spring Field

5x7 inches

acrylic on panel

Field Three Portal

5x7 inches

acrylic on panel

Field Palms

5x7 inches

acrylic on panel