Seascape Artist

This summer has been full of changes, good and not so good – I bought a house, I lost my job, I need to decorate the house on a non-existant budget while looking for another job and I need to keep my spirits flying high.

Being an artist who generally keeps her personal art projects at the bottom of her priority list … behind any day job priorities … behind family priorities [today is the season's first football game for my grandson], I keep looking at one master bathroom wall and thinking … that wall would look awesome with a beach scene … palm trees … blue water … maybe a sailboat … the bathroom has a separate shower with a garden tub … IF I were to use the bathtub [I am a dedicated shower person who insisted I would NOT buy a house unless it had a separate shower] … I would want something nice to look at … I am thinking that my oil paints just may come in handy … I need to get some odorless paint thinner for cleaning brushes but that can be found pretty inexpensively at local Wally World’s.

I was thinking a lovely sunset beach scene might be nice for one wall of the master bedroom too … the afternoon and sunset sunshine floods into the master bedroom … so painting a sunset seascape in there makes perfect sense to me.

My daughter remarked that when we go to sell this house … she is going to have to have it completely re-painted in neutral colors to make it marketable … we will see when the times comes huh? But isn’t that why people buy houses … so they can personalize their living spaces into somewhere they feel comfy and happy? If I cannot go live at the beach … I can bring the seascape flavor to me where I do live.

With all the economic hardship, fear and high prices in America today … decorating your home to be a retreat from the worries of the world outside those doors and windows seems like good financial sense to me … a bit of paint, sweat and pride of self-accomplishment can go a long way to keeping a person feeling self-assured and self-confident during a really tough recession period.

A palm tree, real, photographed or artistically rendered, is an internationally recognized symbol for a tropical paradise full of romance and relaxation.

Palm trees were a dream of warmth and sunshine while scraping dense layers of ice from the car windshield during Iowa ice storms in a typical winter workday for many years before I left for warmer weather in 1989.

Living in the sub-tropics of Houston, palm trees are an every-day every-where visual that blends into the background of traffic, variety of everlasting greenery and urban sprawl. Oppressive heat and humidity – hours of traffic snarls – a creative and artistic mind – frozen winter wastelands combined with the tropics – results: a frozen palm tree painting.

Noticeable palm trees are generally tall, graceful and elegant in magazines, movies and picture postcards. I took the digital picture palm tree photographs below in Houston in July 2001 so marketing is realistic in presenting it to us with it’s best face forward.

Palm Tree Ballet #1 by Barbara Burns

Palm Tree Ballet #1 by Barbara Burns — View Larger

Tags: Barbara Burns, Palm Tree Ballet #1, Imagekind, palm tree, seascape, sea, ocean

BUT, Houston is also full of other palm tree varieties which are quite lovely – many resembling a large or gigantic bush more than the elegant Mexican Palmetto (Sabal Mexicana).

The Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal Minor) is a favorite of mine. They resemble fans flowing from a fountain. These exotic trees planted in the middle of the road median brings an exotic but calming effect to Richmond Avenue among other major Houston traffic arteries.

Fan type palm leaves radiate like sun rays in a child’s drawing. Feather type palms remind me of feathers, fern leaves or miniature weeping willows.

Below are also photographs from an Iowa winter and some that were taken in Oklahoma. Then of course, we also have the glorious Galveston Beach Gulf of Mexico … these were taken in 1989 … not long after I came to Texas the very first time.

I still love seeing palm trees! They fascinate me and bring a warmth of joy to my life just seeing them as I drive around the Houston area.