Tropical Storm Debby At Tampa Bay

Palma Ceia Skies As Debby Rolls In

Tropical Storm Debby is winding down in the Gulf, though Tampa is still under a Tornado Watch.

Heavy rain pounded the roof last night as lightning flashes made it impossible to sleep. This morning we heard the sound of cars pushing through flood waters in surrounding streets as some made their way to work.

Next we look forward to an explosion of mosquitoes from standing waters.

Picnic Island Palms As Tropical Storm Debby Slowly Moves On

After days of being cooped up (and no painting!) I had to venture out to Picnic Island with the first sun rays to break through this afternoon.  It was difficult walking the beach in high winds.

I took 148 pictures of the shoreline, kite surfers, and a ship in the bay--most are too blurred to use. The filtered look of this photo is due to the salt water on my camera lens. Note the waters have washed  away the palms' soil and roots.

Picnic Island Beach Washed Away in TS Debby

This photo dramatically shows the severe erosion a mild tropical storm can cause. The beach is gone, washed away.

That three foot "ledge" is what the raging storm waters gouged out. As I tried to walk along the water's edge, waves washed the sand from underneath my feet making for an interesting scene as I maintained my balance.

Just off shore, kites with dangling surfers held my attention. This guy was awesome. He's at least twenty feet above the water.

Picnic Island Kite Surfing During TS Debby

As I watched four kite surfers, I noticed one lone wind surfer had sense enough to keep his gear on the shore. A great example of Risk Takers and the Risk Averse.

(These are the young people we want covered under insurance plans to even out revenue and expense that SCOTUS is to rule on today.)

Needless to say, I got some terrific reference photos today, though my lack of photography experience shows in the cloudy saltwater covered lens, and movement from heavy winds.

Picnic Island Gulls Grounded by TS Debby

Aw, look who's strolling in the park.

These usually raucous, begging, and territorial birds seem a little stunned.

What's a gull to do? Too windy to fly and waters too rough to eat.

I always wonder where gulls go during storms. I'm thinking a lot of birds move away from storms. I saw only a few gulls and a couple egrets today.

Picnic Island Palms as TS Debby Passes

Water, Water Everywhere

As winds picked up speed and skies clouded again, no risk taking, I nervously left for home.

I'm eager to compare this photo with a prior one offered on my print site Tampa Bay Sunset
that I took during the Full Moon Sunset.


I saw several palms that were topped by the storm. Though we experience these storms every year, it's sad to see nature's fury destroy nature's beauty.
 
 Arriving at my car I realized why I couldn't see anything in my camera's display. My glasses and the camera lens were covered in a salt spray film, too.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Leroy Neiman's Art Scooped the Loop

Davis Islands, Tampa

Procrastinating on battening down the hatches for tropical storm Debby developing out in the bay today. Hunkered down with a bottomless cup of coffee is cozy, but eager to be painting again.

Snapped these studio shots of sail boats, planes, and clouds during a  Father's Day visit to Tampa's Davis Islands. As I captured this scene, two little guys were making memories catching "sharks" while shoreline fishing with their Dad a few feet away.

Harbor Island, Tampa

This view of Harbor Island from Davis Islands captures traffic around the Port of Tampa with a cruise ship docked, a small merchant ship and a freighter heading for open waters, with sail boats and jet skis around the Davis Islands Country Club.

These scenes are typical Tampa Bay, where my paintings depict calmness and tranquility. I live on Tampa Bay not the high seas, don't sail or deep sea fish, which brings me to the subject of this post, Leroy Neiman's energetic art.

http://www.leroyneiman.com/proddetail.asp?prod=0532

Leroy Neiman died this week and many in the media criticized his contemporary art for multiple reasons. Take a look at this link to see who had the last laugh.

Neiman's art is full of energy and spontaneity. I always loved his sail boats and horses for the movement he executed so beautifully, sometimes using household enamel paints. He was one of a kind, imitated today by lesser artists who render paintings in a rainbow of colors which somehow fall flat without the intensity of motion that Neiman's paintings depict.

As a young military wife, I lived and painted in the Chicago area when Neiman reached his great fame through his works in Playboy and television broadcasts of the Olympics. I loved the city's art focus and the "Loop" in downtown with the colossal Picasso sculpture at Daley Plaza, and other marvelous venues for every kind of art and entertainment. That great city's energy was palpable every where every day. Every Friday night young people "scooped the loop" as they rode through downtown in search of entertainment.

I loved mid-westerners, cultural diversity and the excitement and energy of city life. I realized one could buy anything, do anything, be anything in the city, just as Leroy Neiman believed. "I guess I created LeRoy Neiman," the artist once said. "Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I'm a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work." Leroy Neiman Biography Leroy Neiman's travels and his city environments gave him the focus of his art: beauty and high energy. As a young artist, I loved every Leroy Neiman work I came across in publications and studied every color, every brush stroke. They were captivating.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1968/68-chicago.html

Worried friends and family warned me to be careful in big mean Chicago. This photo of riots during the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention shows the other Chicago venue that filled TV screens every evening across the country. I arrived there a few months later and lived on a street where apartment, store, corner bar windows were still boarded-up. This was not Neiman's beautiful Chicago. His paintings were of the "good life" and as I recall there was little good about 1968 in Chicago or any other US city.

As an old soul 18 year old bride of my high school sweetheart, a potentially Viet Nam bound sailor of 20, I developed my art focus through my travels and city environments as well: peace and tranquility. Leroy Neiman and I painted that to which we aspired. We each traveled the Loop of having hit our focus. People from all walks of life loved his art. Our Viet Nam war history was pivotal in the difference in my generation and his, in his energy and my tranquility. Now I am the older generation; a new one must find their expression of our global culture for focus as they begin their Loops.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Inspiration in Painting and Pricing Your Art

Tampa Bay Sunset

So much inspiration, so little time to paint!

Waterlogged with this week's rains and ready to get out to paint for my new gallery-

Moving to my own online gallery is big-only want to do it once. I've taken advantage of online information published to help self-representing artists go digital.

Rainy weather can offer painters a needed break to research, stay current on technology, and plan ways to turn over inventory so we can paint more pictures!

Favorite Sunset on Tampa Bay

When looking for inspiration, we need only look around our homes, our own backyards, or family and friends for portraits.

My backyard is the bay, my primary focus. Inside, a maze of stacked boxes is the focus as I prepare to move in a few months- less inspirational than the outdoors.

However, many an artist has drawn or painted gorgeous works of bag and box subjects. I know one painter who paints on boxes.

Art Inspiration, is an article with many ideas to boost creativity!


Once the new gallery beginning inventory is completed, decisions have to be made on what to offer in each venue and to set the pricing that will fit within all venues.


An online gallery's vastly larger audience requires extra care when setting pricing for domestic, international, wholesale, retail, gallery, small affordable pieces-likely a greater line of products. Having always used a simple pricing per square inch based on time, materials and venue, I now have to reformulate prices.

Pricing Art is a brief article that helps focus points of consideration in pricing art works.

In addition to paintings, prints, and cards, visual artists can now easily offer all the items we find in museum gift shops. When choosing marketing venues, great care must be taken in planning to contract with retail professional gallery representation. Their pricing and terms for selling reproductions could create conflicts. Multiple online sites could possibly be utilized to overcome limitations, if the original painting prices aren't compromised in offering more affordable product items.

Happy painting!

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings