Merrimack River Painters

The Summer 2018

A year ago I wrote about our cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee, about having to make the difficult decision to sell.

The first part of this summer was spent cleaning, packing our stuff and repairing, replacing, lugging boxes to our other home (will have to deal with that this winter). We finally listed it on June 27^th of this year. A very sad moment signing that document.

Here we are still here, sitting on this beautiful deck, looking out at our beautiful view that never seems to get old.  

Even the Eagles have been so fun to watch this year, as they swoop down with their catch of the

moment, to rest on a rock by our beach and eat, or land in a tree to dry their feathers.

The real estate sign is still up. It started out at the end of the dock, then one day when a couple on a jet ski came by, and I heard them talking and trying to figure out if that sign was for our place or the one next door, we moved the sign to a tree in front of the property.

 Unfortunately the one next door is a falling down wreck, and too close to our property line, so I could see the confusion, especially where our dock is located.

 I digress.

When it is your place, that you have loved and cherished for nearly 40 years, you can’t imagine someone else not loving it too.

There has been only one showing so far, so that person who is going to love this place as much as we do, hasn’t discovered it yet.

Up until the last week or so, hubby has been still pruning and cleaning and painting toward that end, and finally, finally he and I have been able to just relax and enjoy the time we may still have out here, before we do finally have to say goodbye.

This blog is about us as painters but it is also about all aspects of our lives because everything influences the artist within. Where this island has been a big part of my life for this long, the paintings I have created out here, by myself as well as with other creative friends of mine, are memories I will always have with me.

Not just the paintings of the lake, the beauty that surrounds me has been hard to capture all these years. It is like trying to take a picture of the Grand Canyon, when you see almost immediately that you will never be able to take a picture that represents the grandeur and colors that ARE the Grand Canyon. That is how Lake Winnipesaukee feels to me. It’s natural beauty, surrounded by the beautiful NH mountain ranges.

 Every day every aspect of every day, the changes in the color landscape has been very difficult to capture, though I have tried countless times, it has never been well enough.

I guess the best thing is to absorb it all while I am still here, then maybe someday that “perfect” painting will come through.

At the Pier

Watercolor

In the meantime, I have had a few opportunities to sit out here on the deck and paint, perhaps not the mountains surrounding us, but a few scenes from when hubby and I were in Nags Head, at the Outer Banks of North Carolina with friends in early May.

At the Pier Two

Watercolor

Fun pieces of the characters we saw one day at Jeannette’s Pier, their love of fishing obvious in their stance and determination to catch that big one for dinner.