Painter Cindy Packard Richmond shares a collection from her portfolio depicting life on the open water. Visit her website to learn more.
“Hermione’s Sails” oil on linen, 40” x 30”
What you choose to paint would seem to be what you love. But for me, it is more convoluted. I am just as drawn to what gives me anxiety.
“Greens on Blue” oil on linen, 34” x 28”
I began painting late in life. Previously, I wrote two published novels and did freelance food writing. Classes at the Art League in Alexandria, Virginia, changed my life. I began with pastels, painting oversized, juicy produce, seafood and desserts. (I was overweight for much of my life. Food held promise and self-punishment.) I switched to oils in 2006.
“The Edwina B.” oil on linen, 34″ x 56″
I learned to swim next to a waterfall. Perhaps that was the onset of my irrational fear of water. Or maybe it began when as a child, I was pulled away from shore by a riptide.
“Open Seas” oil on linen, 40” x 30”
My parents bought an old Victorian house on a small island overlooking a bay and the ocean. We spent every summer there. The island is my touchstone, my sense of place. My emotional home is surrounded by water.
“Moored” oil on linen, 32” x 36”
Sailboats are lovely to look at, the devil to paint. Why did I paint so many boats? It could be that love/fear dynamic. Boats have no brakes. Once, the gears on our Boston Whaler jammed in reverse. I had to thread my way home backwards through a packed harbor.
“Boat, Still Life” oil on linen, 48” x 28”
Sailboats. Again, no brakes. And at the mercy of wind and tides! My brother and I were often becalmed or lost in fog. Invariably, I was the one who had to get out into the squishy muck to pull us off a sandbar. In 2020 I began to address the water itself. “The Curl” is my favorite.
“The Curl” oil on canvas, 36” x 60”
I was a resident member of the Torpedo Factory Art Center for seventeen years. My studio, with huge windows, was forty feet from Alexandria harbor and the Potomac River. Of course.