Summer is the right time for creating art.  The air is warm (or depending on your location, downright hot!) and the skies are mostly sunny. Nature is alive with the arrival of many new green leaves, and the bustle of baby creatures of all kinds.  This is also the time of year when many vacationers enjoy a trip to the coastal regions to dip their toes in the ocean’s cool blue tides. People since the dawn of time have been drawn to the sea.  It’s life forms are numberless and magnificent, and are found in so many lovely colors and shades.  Contrasted with the brilliant sky above, the sea becomes a sort of mirror for what is overhead, whether clear or full of storm clouds.

Artists are understandably caught up in the allure of the sea, the beach, and the rolling white sand dunes by the shore.  While most of us might think the beach is for summer, an artist may be more attracted to the coast in the off seasons;  the cold chill of winter and its gusts of wind may serve to inspire the artistic spirit more than a game of volley ball and a clam bake.  Perhaps the distant, midnight glow of a forgotten lighthouse would present artists with a more complex subject than people riding rafts in the surf.  Only the artist can know for sure what the draw is to that certain place and time.  But what we can know is that artist who paints inspired works according to the coming and going of tides is not undertaking something new.

Photographers do not set out to paint or sketch what they find at the ocean’s edge;  rather, they seek to capture a still moment in time from an angle that perhaps only they can see.  There may be the flash of a foamy crested wave breaking on an outcropping of rocks, and the photographer is in the right place at just the right time to catch this moment and immortalize it forever.  Unless he or she had been there, the moment would have been lost, and the image swept out to sea like so much else, to be forgotten, and never noticed.

If you are an artist seeking inspiration this season, disconnect your satellite tv reception, and take a trip to the beach.