A House on the Ocean

I've been practicing watercolor lately - specifically washes. Washes are hard to do and I generally don't do them. I qualify my ineptitude by allowing that washes "aren't my style." In the meantime I continue to practice in the same spirit I did when I was learning how to drive my parent's car with a standard shift while all of my friend's practiced on automatics - it was good to know just in case I needed to and did, bail my friends out of seriously bizarre situations. But these are stories for another blog.

I figured painting a house on the ocean was a good subject for my wash practice as it represents something equally elusive in my life. And while a house on the ocean is something I aspire to, there is a powerful and innate fear of owning one.

My fear is that I would sit on my veranda and stare out over the water all day, every day in complete ecstasy.  I would forget to eat, sleep, and work and become petrified in place. Hundreds of years later archeologists would ponder whether it was a sudden and unexpected Pompeii-like volcanic eruption, a dramatic planetary cooling event, or the impact of an asteroid that caught her off guard. They might even suppose she was banished to this outpost for having adopted the science of quantum physics in the face of current religious belief.

And this folks is the reason why both watercolor washes and a house on the ocean elude me. Get back to work claudia, focus claudia!

A House on the Ocean • 8" x 8" watercolor framed to 12" x 12" • $200