I'm on the Florida gulf coast in large part to work; it always having been such a fertile place for painting, but it hasn't been happening.   Having come off of an extremely intensified time in the studio in December, perhaps it's creative fatigue, and surely in part physical fatigue, given that my methods for painting and scale call for considerable energy and strength.

A fresh 30 yard roll of canvas is propped up against the kitchen wall, breathing it's coppery breath down my neck as I go by.  Paint bottles mixed, brushes, pencils, paper, boards set up outside to work on, not a single inclination or movement towards them is detected.  I walk the beach, walk and walk and walk, no urge to consider shape, line, color.  I feel guilty.

This past year, intensely focused OUT - studio building, negotiations, concrete pads, vistas, horizons, mass bird migrations, space, canvases large enough to depict space, series multiplying and expanding to 12 paintings deep, every foot of wall space having something pinned to it.  But January has been an inward turn.

On the shore, Instead of as usual watching the vast body of water, the birds in flight, the horizon line, I keep finding myself kneeling, pulling in closer and closer to the intimate, camera held as close as it will focus, to see the tiny jewels of the sea, the bubbles from retreating waves, bird tracks, the tiny shadows of bird tracks.  Seeing that each is a universe.  Everything is a universe!

(The cosmic so readily available by the sea.)

With 3" square pieces of paper, a few pencils, some watercolor - the beginnings of inspiration.