The Cranes of Carrollwood

Oil on Canvas        22 x 30      Private Collection

The serene park behind the Carrollwood Cultural Center buzzes from time to time with vendors during our Arts in the Park, and during the Market on the 2nd Saturday of the month. It is always a place of variety and interest during these events, but my main interest in this lovely setting is during my digital photography class when I take my students out to photograph whatever they can find here. I have made hundreds of photographs of this place, usually in the late afternoon when the light is casting long shadows and the trees are dark against the setting sun.

There are always things of interest; birds, bugs, lizards, and passing people on foot, on bikes and in cars. I wanted to capture the serenity of the place, as well as the wandering Sandhill Cranes who seemed totally oblivious of us shooting our cameras madly at them.

This was an especially nice painting for me to do, as it is always nice to work a landscape, and it was particularly nice to associate my painting with a job that has been a wonderful experience for me, as the Art Curator of the Carrollwood Art Gallery. I’m moving on, to give myself more time for my artwork, and I feel that this is a symbolic painting as I retire from one thing and move into another. All that green and blue seems so peaceful and quiet, with just a glimmer of exciting red here and there. Life is like that, I think. Or, if it isn’t, it should be!