Green Ice & Muted Mauves

St John's, Newfoundland in iceberg season is a place I've always wanted to visit. I love icebergs . One day in the Portland Museum I saw Rockwell Kent's paintings with all that ice and snow up close and personal... and I fell in love with them...   

There is ice up here in Maine and New Hampshire. But it is small pieces of ice... beautiful in their own right. Marcus & I  headed over to Durham Point on Great Bay to see the ice as it was breaking up into mini icebergs.  When we arrived at Adam's Point it was a study in blues, greens and mauve......the colors were soft, the air was still and it was just high tide.

The sea water was pouring into the bay on the western side of the peninsula. 

Cakes of ice were floating around the inlets.

The bright green color of the ice submerged in water is amazing.

At first sight the bright green color is startling...

We parked near the boat launch on Adam's Point Road, between two bays.There is water to the east and west.

The ice was breaking off and floating along on currents moving in two opposite directions, south along the shore and north toward the middle of the bay.

I set up and mixed my colors...The weather started to change. The heavy cloud cover started to move out over the ocean. 

In only half an hour the sun was burning through and the entire scene had changed.  The moody soft colors were gone. Poof! 

I kept blocking my colors into the scene from memory...

The difficulty was that the light kept getting brighter and it was hard to see the original colors in the scene I had chosen when it was overcast. 

The sun dropped lower in the sky, the wind picked up and flocks of Canadian geese flew in for the night.  

The sun was getting so bright I decide to stop and call it a wrap.  I could barely see the panel and reflections were bouncing all over the place.

Horse tails scattered across the sky. Then the big wind came! It came in hearty gusts, blowing my easel and everything else around. 

I set my tripod legs for windy conditions and that stabilized the easel. But it was  even hard at this point to keep my hat on. 

With 25 - 35 mph winds I' was ready to pack it in. Strong wind is the hardest thing to deal with when painting. Its so distracting!  

Green Ice, 11X14 Oil on panel