What I'm Working On Now

I've started working on a new oil painting over the last week or so, from a picture that I took on the Fourth of July. I love to paint sunsets because they are the perfect opportunity to use all the fun pinks and oranges and yellows with the freedom of the entire sky to play in! This scene eventually will have the Newport-Jamestown bridge in the far right (just behind the sailboat) but both it and the sailboat itself will be final touches.



In searching for a title I'm definitely leaning towards a poetry reference. I entitled my favorite sunset painting "Be Literal A Moment" after a line in Seamus Heaney's "Squarings". For this painting, I'm enamored of the title "Close to the sun in lonely lands" (from the Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem 'The Eagle').



He clasps the crag with crooked hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands
Ringed with the azure world he stands

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls