Inspiration for Quietwater Evening

The golden hour on the coast always produces magical vistas, and Quietwater Evening depicts one such occasion. The clouds during this time especially call to me. The warm golden light pours over their billowing forms, surrounded by skies of brilliant blue…stunning. Add to that the mirror of quiet Pensacola Bay, and the beauty just keeps compounding. I often stand and stare into the heavens on afternoons such as these, drinking in the view.

Lift Up Thine Eyes Unto a Quietwater Evening

Sometimes I wonder if anybody sees me standing and staring and wonders what in the world I’m doing. I kind of hope this does happen, and that I inspire them to look up with me. Far too often, society is dreadfully downcast—literally and figuratively. We focus on the negative information in the news. We compare ourselves to our friends and acquaintances on Facebook. We watch endless strings of mindless Youtube videos in a ceaseless quest to entertain ourselves. And we do all this on our smartphones, with our faces towards the ground, forsaking the real world for the digital one. I frequently think of Norman Rockwell’s painting Lift Up Thine Eyes. Rockwell, as he always does, called out our dreadful social tendency in this brilliant visual commentary. (And he did so before we even had portable electronics!) I hope my art, like Rockwell’s, causes people to stop and consider what is truly important in life, and to seek truth.