The Boatyard

2015-02-06T16:04:00.002-08:00

Last year, Danny and I spent almost a month in Split, Croatia. It was the end of the summer, so it was pretty quiet.

Split is a popular vacation destination in July and August for Italian tourists. We were told that during that time, Split is so packed with vacationing Italians that you hear more Italian than Croatian spoken in the streets. But by September, the city gets quiet again.

On one of our random exploration walks, Danny and I found a boatyard. There was a large metal T-shaped post that was used to raise and lower boats. Two men were using it to raise and clean the bottom of a boat.

This is a painting of that boatyard. It's a semi-abstract painting. The abstract brush strokes evoke the feelings I had of breathing in the cool marine air and seeing the reflections off the surface of the water. The shapes of the scenery are outlined in black. I used a Chinese watercolor set which has beautiful, deep black and blue paints.

There was a cafe overlooking the boatyard. We sat there for awhile, chatted, and had espressos. The views were beautiful, but the cafe was oddly empty. We were the only patrons when we walked in. Later, three men came in for beer and took a table on the far end of the cafe in a dark corner, not even overlooking the view. They must have been locals.

This painting was very much inspired by the video "Abstract Fine Art Painting with Mixed Media - Part 3 - Robert Joyner" from Strathmore Artist Papers' 2013 Online Workshop Series.