Palletteers at Cane Bay

Ah, a day painting at the beach: what could be more relaxing? When I first arrived at Cane Bay, around 8:45 AM the beach looked serene and there were only a few people taking a morning swim. Looking out at the sea I noticed a series of breakers continuously making their way to the beach. I quickly found a gigantic old tree that provided a huge natural umbrella of shade, proceeded to set up under it, and decided to paint the view looking west, one of my favorites on St. Croix.

I no sooner had my easel set up and my paper palette pad on the easel's tray when "whoof" a gust of wind blew my palette forward and off the easel. Ut oh, so it's going to be one of those days.. ok, ... so I got out my blue masking tape and taped my pad to the tray. Unfortunately, this didn't prove to be a good enough defense against the gusting wind as no sooner did I have my dollops of oil paints laid out on this very same palette but the wind came again and blew the entire easel over! There went my jars of mineral spirits and medium... OY! Luckily I had more MS and there was just enough medium left in its jar that I could still paint..

I quickly figured out that it must be a cruise ship day as people got unloaded from more than one taxi van to enjoy a day at the beach. Some Cruzan entrepreneurs were already there to take advantage of the opportunity: a gal who'd brought a trailer of beach chairs to rent to beach-goers, and a Rose's RoadKill guy who drove up and set up his hot dog stand on the road outside the fenceline. So, while we battled the wind, with visions of Dorothy and Kansas in our heads, holding onto our palettes (I hadn't been the only victim of the wind) and easels, paints and papers, the beach-lovers had a lovely day in the surf!



Because it was soooo windy and there was absolutely no place on the beach where we could put our paintings on display without the chance of them falling down, flying away, or getting sand imbedded into them, we adjourned to Rowdy Joe's to have our "show and tell" before a yummy lunch.









Of course, what's a day painting plein air without a little excitement, right? We all had a great time and now we've another story to tell about why we LOVE painting plein air!
Ginger