As with “Great Falls on the Potomac,” this is one of the most encompassing panoramas to which I have ever laid eyes. It was so incredibly vast from left to right that, at the time, I was not able to obtain a canvas broad enough to encompass the true scope of the scene. In fact, I believe that I had to take at least a dozen vertical reference photographs to take in view as I believed that it should have been digested and appreciated and, even to this, as with “Great Fall on the Potomac,” no photograph or painting can substitute the view of the real thing. One must stand on that island and become one personally with the view.

Now, this painting has two stories with it.

This first is what this picture represents. This painting is the product of our first vacation to Nassau in the Bahamas in 1980. The Sea Island Adventure is that boat out there. It was a charter that, perhaps daily, carried groups of vacationers some miles to a deserted island outside of Nassau. There, we were treated to our own explorations of the island and a luau style picnic where they dug a hole in the ground, filled it with hot coals, covered it with all sorts of good foods, and let it go for, I believe a few hours or so. (This was, after all,1980.) Now, as we waited for the food to cook, everyone went off, on their own, over the island. As for myself, I decided that, for a part of the outing, I would go snorkeling. In fact, I took off on my journey just down there about 50 or 60 feet to right of the boat. Now, to make it more fun, I am near sighted and, obviously, had to leave the glasses behind with Lela and snorkeling is something to which coordination must be learned in order to know how to take in air in sufficient amounts and to hold it while being under. As I swam and swam and glided and glided and came up for air a couple of times, I wondered at the beauty of the white tan sand and intrinsic moiré patterns created in it by the floating and shifting waves above me. It was surreal, as there seemed to be no division between up and down, and beautiful. Suddenly, though, after a few moments, an innocuous and uncharacteristic long slim shadow appeared to my left. If I moved to the left, it moved to the left. If I moved to the right, it moved to the right. This told me that I was not in the water by myself. As I looked up in that direction and squinted through the goggles and the matted and faded aquamarine water, I saw what appeared to me to be a small beady eye. I looked at it and it looked at me. For there, I thought I could also discern a long slim dark body attached to it with a long slim snout in front of it. “Barracuda!!!” was my first instant thought and “Let me get the [bleep!!!] out of here!!!” was my second. I have never swum so fast. If only the USOC (United States Olympic Committee) had known. It was a “Sea Island Adventure.”

The second story to this painting is far more personal and trying. First to this, as most all of you are and have been, I have spent the great majority of my adult life working a 40 hour work week (and then some at times) while being a father of 3 with my wife Lela, who also worked a 40 hour work week. As an artist, I was primarily a “Weekend Warrior”. As you may note from the date of the painting as 1984/1993, let me also note that my father died in1982. This was a most difficult time for me in particular and my family. As I started this painting, which I estimated probably took at least 40 plus hours to paint, I got it a point where I had finished the sky and clouds, the distant island, the trees without their leaves, and the basics of the foreground, my youngest son, Zaire, arrived home from school one day and decided to give good old Dad a hand. Just between the third tree from the right and fourth, just between the beach and the horizon, he took some red ink that I had and splattered it generously over that area. When I got home and saw it, it deflated me emotionally like a balloon. (Hey, give the guy a break. He was only 6 at the time.) With all that the family went through during that time period, it was not until 1993 that I found the will to finish it. (Of note, the same would go another painting on this site in the Sci Fi/Fanatsy area for the work “Sagittarian Jovian Romp”.) The challenge of this painting was to match up seamlessly the colors and brush strokes of the water in that area with the other areas of water. I think it was worth the wait.