Paintings 2025-26
When I was a child we always went to Ocean City before school began, after Labor Day. The town was quiet then . My Mom was a single mom and an elementary school teacher in a private school. One of the benefits was extra weeks of summer vacation, one after Labor Day. After Labor Day rents were cheaper and we got to carry on a family tradition of summer at the shore. The larger long term benefit was that her kids, me and my brother, got to go to private school for free. This education was a great gift and it complicated my view of the world.
Ocean City was about thirty miles from where my Mom was born, in Salisbury, Maryland. To my maternal family this was home land. My mom learned to fish from my great grandfather in the nearby river and streams and surf casting too.. I learned from my grandmother how to gut a fish young. The day that inspired this painting I was twelve. I was older than the rest but onthat day a group of kids had been taken out early in the morning to fish so our parents could sleep in. The youngest boy was just learning. He was learning from his family’s housekeeper.