Passing Storm, Long Island Sound pleinair - sold

6"x8" oil on Belgian linen mounted on professional artboard (Raymar)

"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."
- Charlie Brown


I am participating in a group of artist bloggers called "The Artist Challenge" by invitation. The current theme is "Unrequited Love".....which I thought might be tough for a landscape artist to fit in to this one. However.....
if you happen to be one person from Florida...living in a cold place like Connecticut....well the feeling is much the same. It is so easy to "fall in love" with the place over spring, by summer you're head over heels. Fall is quite beautiful, comfortable, and just oh, so nice. Winter starts and at first it's interesting, sort of pretty, a big change, sort of exciting. But then it gets to be very 'wearing'. It starts to grind you down, sometimes being outright abusive. I can't take it anymore. There, it's given me the 'cold shoulder'. Should I have left when I had the chance? My daughters and I speak of it as having a "case of the Februaries". It's the shortest month, but feels oh so long up here. Ugh, what misery. March isn't a whole lot better. Then that hopefulness starts, magazines show loads of spring flowers. The wind starts to whisper to you, "I'll be back with flowers, I promise". You know if you fall for it again, you'll just be paid back with winter all over again.

I painted this from the comfort of my van while over at Harkness Park, just outside of New London, CT. The gale force winds (well, they were rather strong gusts) were buffeting the van, but I had a great view of the Sound & the stormy clouds rolling by. The sea was covered with whitecaps, it was pretty rough out there. The water was an angry green-grey in color. Typical late winter....sort of exciting to watch, and luckily it was warm enough to tolerate the wind (perhaps in the low 40s?). It did feel good to get out of the house to paint, even if I was couped up in a van!