Vacation Travels

When vacationing, I take my notebooks, ink pens, watercolors and oil crayons.  I work rapidly to catch the uniqueness of places where we are traveling or a special moment of a place we have treasured for years.  Almost all our vacations have been shared with family and friends on Tar Island — one of  the “Thousand Islands” in the St. Lawrence River. This Canadian Island (where my grandfather built a summer cottage over 110 years ago) is a beautiful, peaceful and a marvelous place to relax and capture through my art. (Under “series” I share additional paintings of Canadian cottages and boathouses.)  Several acrylic paintings are more detailed remembrances of vacations.

Also included in this collection are reminders of several other brief vacations.  Our amazing children generously surprised my husband and I with trips to Puerto Rico (2016) and to Spain and  Italy (2005).  In 2001 friends invited us to New Port Rhode Island. At the time I had a badly broken leg and spent hours just sitting around and painting watercolors.  (More of these paintings are in my “Newport Series”.) 

When I was 20 I had the incredible experience of living on my own in Spain for almost a year. In my”Spanish notebook” I tried to catch the uniqueness of Spanish life. My other notebook shares some impressions of our 30th anniversary travels in Italy and Spain.