Praying for our commercial fishermen

“Praying for our fishermen”
18 x 24" oil

I’m in the process of painting an area in North Carolina that is known as “Down East”. It stretches from the North River (north of Beaufort, NC) all the way up to Cedar Island. It was coincidence that a nearby gallery in Atlantic Beach, NC recently invited me to participate in a show of coastal paintings by various plein air artists. The show opened on Saturday, June 6 and will be hanging through the 25th of this month.

I wrote about this painting and the struggle of our commercial fishermen in my March 5 blog. In painting the area, I am attempting to paint the culture, and to capture its images before development further changes its face. When I passed by a church marquis last February that read, “PRAYING FOR OUR COMMERCIAL FISHERMEN”, I decided I needed to add the scene to my Down East repertoire. It so captures what has been taking place in the area. The combination of environmental laws that restrict commercial fishing, with the low prices of imported seafood have pretty much wiped out the hope for survival of most commercial fishermen in the area.

Four months after I did this painting, the environmentalists must be looking like our fishermens’ best friends. Environmentalists are against off shore drilling. What a monumental tragedy our gulf fishermen are experiencing. I had no idea when I painted this the catastrophe that was looming for our Gulf Coast, and let’s pray not the Atlantic Seaboard as well.

The oil painting is $700 and is currently hanging at Vision Gallery as part of the gallery’s Coastal Plein Air Show.