Dunes, Ocracoke

Dunes, Ocracoke

Oil on canvas, 18x24

sold

This was the first painting I made on Sunday, and while I was making it, I began to understand some things about myself and what attracts me - or at least, what is attracting me this trip.

You think "Outer Banks" and you think water and waves and beaches - or at least, I do. But on Sunday, I realized that for me, it's not that. It's the dunes and the sky.

Beaches and waves, I can get in Westerly.

Dunes - backbones of the earth, raw and rhythmic, dunes are what calls me. Long skeins of dunes, under a huge and unbroken sky, these pull at my eye and my heart and all my senses.

I don't pretend to understand this. But seeing them, and painting them makes me happy. And so, on this narrow, windswept island, I am painting dunes and not questioning my soul.