about my work...

"I paint Niagara for the same reason Monet painted his haystacks over and over ...the ever changing light".

Creativity art workshops & retreats

Creativity art workshops & retreats
See website for other locations www.permissiongranted.org

Friday, April 24, 2009

Plein Air Painter - Flying into a tragedy

I'll start from the beginning.
I saw the fire from the air approach coming into Myrtle Beach on Wednesday afternoon.
It looked like a tornado from the plane.

On the ground, there was no talk other than it was a fire.
By dinner the fire had crossed a highway and in a 4 minute span, consumed 5 houses.
At 2:00 am were were awakened by a neighbor to update on the fire. At 4 am, we were evacuated. At 5 am were were one of many at a friend's at Little River, with many dogs and cats that were not welcome at shelters set up in the city, including a stray that my cousin rescued.
The National Guard was called in and began water dropping. We thought the fire had changed direction and attempted to return home about 1 pm, by 4, the neighborhood was again evacuated and we went to a friend's seasonal home, by that time I had been up for over 30 hours.

During this time there was very little communication. In the empty house, with no electricity, the portable radio we had, played more music than actual news.
The news updates were surprisingly from the day before.

We were able to return to the neighborhood last night to dense smoke advisory but, at thi time Fri noon, there's talk of evacuation once again.

Over 20,000 acres ave been affected, an entire community in Barefoot Landing has been burned to the ground. Animals left chained when their owners, perished.A few shelters were accepting animals.
The threat is not being able to get out in time, the threat is that the wind changing direction has made the fire unpredictable and routes out would be iffy.

The Horry County area needs to get better disaster response in place. They are equipped for Hurrcaine damage but, not prepared for a fire of this magnitude.

I am not in direct danger but, monitoring the situation.

My workshop has not been canceled.

Tourists are still being assured that tourist areas have not been affected.

My heart goes out to all who have lost their homes during this tragedy.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Plein Air Painter - Plagarism

Plagarism - it exists...
But don't you just hate when someone comes along and takes the words right off your
website and writes articles and BLOGS - My article is clearly labeled copyright and may not be reproduced without written permission.
I am so upset ! I found another artist who had written an article on a site called Empty Easel about Choosing an Art Workshop - only when I started reading, she had plagarized an article I had written and copyrighted clearly 5 years ago ! It's also on her blog at http://elicedrone.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-have-great-workshop-experience.html