Sharmagne Leland-St.John
It was Labor Day weekend 1983. We were in New York working on the movie "The Cotton Club."
Sara's mom and dad invited us to spend the weekend at their home in Montauk.
My late husband was an avid fly fisher and Ben, Sara's dad, also enjoyed "wetting lines" now and then.
I enjoyed my time spent with Binnie, Sara's mother with her soft Southern drawl, but on this day, decided to go with the men down to the sea.
Single file we followed the pathway down to Turtle Cove, where we were quite happy to see it was deserted. Richard and Ben waded out into the surf and began casting out their lines to attract the stripers swimming in the shallows.
I brought out my Windsor Newton watercolour set, a 5 by 7 inch Windsor Newton cold press watercolour block and began to survey the scene to decide what I would paint.
My eye fell upon the bluffs and I decided it would be the perfect water colour to commemorate our weekend in Montauk.
Upon returning home to “Treetops” my 1935 Laurel Canyon home, I placed it in a box frame and hung it in the dining room next to our paintings of the Caryatids in the Acropolis in Greece and the ones of my friend Christopher’s home in the Cotswolds in England and some from our adventures in New Zealand, etc.
The more I looked at that little water colour, the more I was convinced that I should make a larger painting from it.
The size I chose was 14 inches by 20 inches.
When it was finished, I was disappointed because for some reason it didn’t “read”well in that size.
I kept looking at it and comparing it to the smaller sketch, wondering what I could do to enhance its beauty when I decided it needed a lighthouse.
I went through my photographs and found a photo of a beautiful lighthouse in Michigan,
Which I painstakingly set out to paint. I added this lovely old lighthouse onto the promontory in Montauk. Suddenly the painting came alive even if the lighthouse is a bit tilted.
A Michigan Lighthouse on a Montauk Shore
(Finished Watercolour… our September Ekphrastic subject!)
My photos on the title page are from my trip to New York last October to celebrate the life of Peter Yarrow who left us on January 7, 2025.
I had seen some photos of the 911 memorial in my photo class at the Cancer Support Community in Sierra Madre, but was never able to pin down the woman who had made them, so I decided to utilise this trip to make my own.
It was a sad morning, but I’m glad I visited . I had three friends who perished in the 911 plane crashes. |
