Bolivar Flats Beach , Towards Galveston - new daily oil painting

Bolivar Flats Beach, Towards Galveston
Mark Nesmith
Oil on Gessoed Hardboard
6" x 9"
2013
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Bolivar Flats is one of my favorite beaches. It's just before the ferry landing to Galveston and is a birding area. Being so close to the ferry means most people drive right past it in a hurry to get to Galveston often leaving this beautiful stretch of coast unpopulated by people. 

I painted this while I was setup to sell some paintings at The Logon Cafe in Beaumont, Tx as part of their Christmas on Calder event.  After a beautiful morning the weather turned cold and grey in an instant. I didn't sell much, but painting this warm beach and daydreaming of the Gulf Coast and good compoany kept a smile on my face.

Bolivar Flats

Here's a new 12" x 16" oil painting on canvas from my recent trips to Bolivar Flats near Galveston. This was painted in two short sessions over the past two days in between working on some larger paintings. Lots on people put down Texas beaches, and it's true that there's often too much liter and waste lining the beach, but I've always found the wild, overgrown patches of the less touristy beaches like Bolivar Flats to be sublimely beautiful. I really love the rhythm of the tall sea oats against the flickering bright light reflecting off the sand.

Dealing with Depth in a New Daily Oil Painting of the beach at Bolivar Flats, TX

Boliver Flats #2
Mark Nesmith
Oil on Oil Primed Linen Panel
5" x 7"
2013

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Here's another new 5"x7" daily painting if the beach at Bolivar Flats, Tx. Instead of the long diagonal view along the shoreline I had in yesterday's painting, today I'm facing the horizon head on. Converging diagonals automatically convey a string sense of depth. The space in a view like this is much more subtle and can be tricky to handle. I exaggerated the color shifts and contrast in the short expanse of beach, and tried to use softer edges in the distance, leaving the livelier juicy brushwork for the salt grass and seaweed up front. Strong texture and crisp edges tends to project forward in space while the smoother transitions recede. This same effect can be seen in the sky. The light blue towards the distant horizon was kept soft, while the closer clouds were painted with strong brushstrokes. This is an oil painting on oil primed linen panel. I'm very excited and super inspired about this new series of Gulf Coast paintings. I hope you enjoy them too!

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

Click here to purchase this painting.

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.