Sticks and Stones

I had painted this same scene a few months prior, but only focused on the rock stack and ignored the view of the sweeping beach as it arcs its way around this bend in the coast. In the middle of painting this one, a tricky situation arose. My nose just started bleeding randomly. Maybe a bit dehydrated? It happens every few years and always unexpectedly. I saw drops of blood on the palette and had to act fast and dig up a clean paint rag (an old cloth diaper, they are the best) from my pack and hold it to my nose. There’s a chance this painting contains my actual DNA now. Kinda weird. Sorry if it grosses anyone out. It’s just life. And a reminder that our bodies are made of flesh and blood. Fragile like an ecosystem. Eventually unstable like an eroded cliff. We all fall back to the sea, eventually. On this particular day, I did not fall back to the sea though, hopefully my time is a long way off. But it was an awkward way to paint- holding an old cloth diaper to my bleeding face, while sorting out the colors of sand and water, sticks and stones…