On this late January day the Middle Woods was virtually free of the mosquitos that make it one of the buggiest places on LSSI the rest of the year. I took that opportunity to set myself up in a folding chair in a random spot in the woods where an arrangement of palms and a distinctive live oak made for an interesting composition. The wind in the tree tops and the distant sound of the surf was my audio environment–no whining mosquitoes. In 4 peaceful hours, I was able to complete a fairly detailed painting in situ. The live oak, with it’s trunk oddly angled westward, spoke to me of the long ago storm event that tipped it over, and the intervening decades (centuries?) of calm that cloaked it with resurrections ferns and Spanish moss.
