Sunny Sayulita, Mexico

Our Air BnB, Casa Joe! Looking north down the beach with the “don’t swim here!” flag up, Our back yard with bougainvilleas blooming. The view from Choco Banana in Sayulita.

This is the second time that my family and I have been to Sayulita, Mexico. A beautiful surf town on the west coast, just north of Puerto Vallarta, about an hour by car. When it is cold and rainy in Seattle, and the hype of the holidays are in full swing, there is nothing better than escaping to sun, warm surf, relaxed people and the bougainvilleas in full bloom.

For this trip I was thinking of bringing my oil paints, but international plane travel makes transport of supplies a bit more dicey, so I opted for water colors, which I have not used for……decades? They are their own animal, and I felt a bit clumsy at first, but they seemed suited to capturing the lushness, color and warmth of our surroundings.

Literally thousands of people passed by as I painted this. Choco Banana (the restaurant where I was sitting) is right near the town plaza on the busiest street at the busiest time of year, of an already busy tourist town. At any moment I could have taken a picture and had 25 people in the shot, but illustrating crowds was not my goal, so I picked a few people and illustrated them, quickly, because they just keep moving around. When you paint plein air, your realize how much movement is in the world. Even when doing a scene with no people…..the shadows change, light shifts, weather shifts…you are always playing catch up. Speed is an integral part of capturing life, because life is speedy. Unless you are painting a STILL life, in artificial light….where you can freeze time.

A woman commented that she had no idea how I could paint while there was so much activity about. It’s weird, when I am focusing on drawing or painting, I don’t notice it as a distraction. I’m the eye of the storm. The calm at the center of it all. Not to get grandiose, but it does kind of work that way.