A dear artist friend and colleague passed away last year after being diagnosed in 2012 with ovarian cancer. We worked side by side for six years, coordinating island-wide Plein air events for the MVAA. Along with our husbands, we enjoyed many wonderful social occasions together around the island. This view was the last time we dined together on the Aquinnah cliffs up island. As I attempted to depict in these dramatic skies, Janis had a zest for life, colorful personality, unfailing devotion to family and her art and possessed boundless courage in facing the most extreme health challenges.

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What draws us to the sea? It is in the nature of our human spirit to yearn to reconnect with our most basic elements of life: water, air and earth. Add the warming grace of the sun, the scrunch of feet in sand, the liquid coolness of the gentle sea, wind whipped waves and cries of sea birds overhead and you have the perfect summer day.

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Dragged up into the sand, their hulls reflecting the warm glow at end of day, these beached skiffs await a new day of work or play. For now, they bask in the late sun, dripping salty and sweet from their exertion.

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I have visited and painted this scene on many different occasions, in many varied seasons, conditions and degrees of light. I am always in awe of the space that stretches out in all directions, a space that wants to be seen in 360 degrees. It is full of life and color at all times of the year: windswept, wild, yet peaceful all at the same time. How long before the pounding seas heard off in the distance change this vista forever?

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I frequently walk or drive by this view and on this particular evening the sky and water seemed as one, the distant point of perspective a metaphor for hope, the eye being led to a conclusion you can’t see, but trust is there for you to find. Your eye moves along the gentle undulating shapes of the bank in the shadowy light, in contrast to the sky colors perfectly reflected in the waters of the Creek, seemingly flowing off into space.

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In this case, it's NOT the journey, it's getting there...there, being the ferry line. You've survived the road rage and the tangle at the bridges and slalomed your way down the long and winding road to your first glimpse of the sea. You're next in line! There, waiting to swallow your vehicle in its enormous belly, is the most beautiful steel behemoth, it's innards aglow with a limeade and orange Popsicle sunset, to slosh you to paradise. And there, over to the side, past the no-longer neon vending machines, the sun washes it's prophetic last light over the walls of the Steamship terminal, tired but faithfully dispensing tickets, chowders and passengers for so many years, her loyal service the stuff of memories.

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