Seascape. 16" x 20". Oil Paint on Canvas

I received an Regional Artist Project Grant from the Arts Council of Winston-Salem in 2008 to study time and the American landscape through visual imagery and written dialogue of the past in comparison to the present.
My grandfather was a photographer who died in 1963. I inherited hundreds of Ektrachrome slides that are in good to excellent condition and have not been viewed in 50+ years. Over the past few years, I have been sorting and scanning the images at a high resolution to store digitally. As I work, I have been able to categorize the slides by subject matter such as Halloween, the Fourth of July, graveyards, farms, etc.
I found this photograph of my grandmother in the collection and decided it was a composition that I could not pass up. The contrast of the rocky landscape of the New England coast to the blue water and the red jacket was perfect to paint! I especially enjoyed painting my grandmother in what appeared to be her 40's. This is the first painting to my study of time and the American landscape. I hope to visit the coast soon and take new photographs and compare if the landscape has changed. Lucky for me, my grandfather labeled his slides with addresses and dates!