Love This! Beauty On the Beach

There's just something about the work of Tracey Sylvester Harris that gets me every time. It might be the fact that many of her paintings depict women enjoying their time on the beach, at the pool, or basking in the sun (very appropriate for my beach trip this week, I might add...); Or maybe it's the color palette she uses, the visible brushstrokes, the vintage-inspired subject matter meant to capture "long forgotten holidays." Or maybe it's what we don't see. 

Each of her compositions are cropped in a way that leaves us [me] wondering, wanting more. In the paintings where a woman's head is cut off, I want to see her facial expression. When she's gazing off into the distance, I want to see what she's looking at. I want to know more about the beach that she's on, the day she's been having, who she's with. 

It's interesting to see such a brief snapshot of each of these moments in time, but as we discussed yesterday, it's not really about capturing our vacations on film (or in a painting), it's really about living it...

You can check out some of my favorite works by Harris below. 

Don't they make you want to put on your [vintage] suit and swim cap, and jump in the water--or just strike a fabulous pin-up pose? These women look a lot like how I look when lounging on the beach here in South Carolina, in case you were wondering ;)

You can see more of Harris' work on her website, here. 

Now off to enjoy my holiday, before it becomes a long-lost event...