Gulf Coast Beach Vacation and New Daily Oil Painting "Bolivar Flats"

Bolivar Flats Beach
Mark Nesmith
Oil on Oil Primed Linen Panel
5" x 7"
2013

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I've always loved going to the beach. Growing up in Beaumont, TX the Gulf Coast was just an hour or so drive. I come from a large family and my father was a school teacher so money was pretty tight. Nearby Crystal Beach and Galveston Island made for reasonably inexpensive family vacations. Throughout high school and college trips to the beach were frequent, and when I got married we honeymooned in a borrowed beach house from my boss. I used to do lots of paintings and pastels of Galveston Beach and Sea Rim State Park, but after moving to Dallas in 1998 going to the beach became a rare and expensive trip. When I moved back to Southeast Texas this past summer I immediately had the beach on my mind. This past week was Spring Break and I had my kids for the week so we made a trip to Galveston and stopped by Bolivar Flats beach on the way home. Bolivar Flats is just this side of the ferry landing at the tip of the peninsula. It's a lovely stretch of beach with some good variety of plants and an interesting coastline, and the sand dunes that are a regular occurrence at low tides make it a favorite feeding ground for a large variety of shorebirds. I enjoyed sunset there so much that my kids and I made a return afternoon visit later in the week. I'm already thinking of a large series of paintings of the area. This 5" x 7" oil painting on an oil primed linen panel is my first study of Bolivar Flats. This is the view along the shore looking back towards Crystal Beach. I loved the reddish greens of the seaweed along the shore and the bright sunlit expanse of beach in the far distance. I'm planning to do several small studies to get my feet wet again while I start planning some larger works.  In the meantime I'm looking forward to the warmer weather and many more trips to the Gulf Coast.