Blue Crabs

As I mentioned in my first blog post, Facebook reminded me of this painting that I did in my college capstone class in 2013. This is the first painting that I sold. It is 48”x 48”. I remember not being happy with this painting and “fighting” with it a lot. Now I am so happy that it found a home and often wish I could visit it. It represents some large milestones in my art life and it will always have a special place in my heart.
In our capstone class, we were supposed to work in a cohesive series. I had no idea where to start as I have always jumped around in my subject matter. I also had some kind of flu the first weekend of school when I was coming up with my series ideas. I was searching the Internet looking for things that spoke to me, things that I related to. My grandparents lived in the Florida Keys and I had visited them a few times. Those visits, along with my dad’s fish tanks, is what sparked my interest in sea life. As I was searching the Internet looking for images, I found a photo of a bucket of crabs and that’s where it started. First with these blue crabs and then came a red crab followed by some hermit crabs. I love all of the little pieces and segments that they have. They’re very robotic but natural. I love them. Every year I think I’d like to revisit the subject matter, but I haven’t yet.