16 x 20
Oil on Linen Board
Studio Still Life
Sold
One of my favorite books of all time is a simple collection of Outer Banks short stories, paintings and recipes from retired school teacher and charter boat captain, Billy Brown - titled Mullet Roar (http://www.amazgon.com/Mullet-Other-Stories-Outer-Banker/dp/0976117851). Brown takes the reader on a first person tour of his life in and around the Outer Banks and Northeastern North Carolina. With every tale of fishing in the Gulf Stream to deer hunting in Bertie County, the author also turns artist with beautiful paintings of the activities and landscapes that he obviously is so passionate about.
One of the most contagious of Brown's passions is clamming on the many sandbars in and around Oregon Inlet just south of Nags Head and later that day cooking the catch up. Along with his recipes of Wanchese style clam chowder and other clam bake combinations, Brown describes his technique of using a post Northeast wind and various tide times to harvest the tasty mussel. I'll have to admit that there are very few things in life more fun than getting out of the boat and pulling a make shift clam rake with welded kitchen knives along the sandy bottom until the metal hits a clam shell. Maybe one more activity just as fun is getting in deeper water further out in the sound and actually feeling the clam with your feet and then diving down to retrieve it. This is frowned upon by the kids after shark week though and now that Mary Lee (http://sharks-ocearch.verite.com/) has been pinged paying a visit to the Pamilico Sound, I'm not sure if I'll ever get my children out there again to help fill a bucket of clams.
Yesterday I pulled out of the freezer some clams left over from this summer. Along with some red potatoes and some yellow corn, I baked all in a shallow dish and threw them on my still life board down in the basement studio. My friend, Chip Warren, provided me with the 1970's era Budweiser can that he found in the swamp along the Cashie River the other day when the wind had blown most of the water out into the sound leaving bottoms exposed that are usually covered in water. He put his boat over and an hour later came back with various beer cans, tree stand ladders, fishing poles, license plates - you name it and he had it in the boat. I saw the can and immediately knew that I had to clean it up and put it in a painting. No clam bake is complete without a cold Bud, so there it is.
