For my daughter's school auction, each homeroom was asked to assemble a themed basket for auction.  The theme for Mary's room was the beach.  This piece was created as a donation for that event.  The composition is fictional. 

I admire and study extensively the work of Homer and Monet.  When designing this piece, I referred to their paintings of the tropics.  My goal for this painting was to capture the splendor of sunset on Florida's Gulf Coast.  The composition would include only two main shapes, the sky, and beach at low light.  The sky would dominate.  For the sky shape, capturing the color gradation happening both top-to-bottom, and left-to-right was key.  The beach shape was backlit, and consequently its value and hue range were constrained to the dark spectrum.  The challenge for this shape would be to convey the depth and form of the beach accurately and in concert with the sky, within these tight constraints.  The vegetation is Floridian.