"Salt Marsh" A Breath of Salt Air: Art Blog by Casey Chalem Anderson

It seems that places by the sea are more changeable than anywhere else. Always in transition, the mysterious salt marsh waters fill and fall with the tide. All this activity is orchestrated by the gravitational forces of the moon and the sun and the rotation of the Earth.

Every locale has a different pattern to the tides. Some have two equal high tides and two low tides each day. Some places have only one high and one low each day. Some have a combination, the mixed tide.

Recently I’ve been lucky enough to explore an expansive section of tranquil water salt marsh as it swoops and loops through vivid green grasses. Long footbridges of narrow cedar planks hover over the blue water that ultimately leads to the open bay. It is breathtakingly beautiful and completely inspiring.

Here is the study in pencil for the oil color painting I plan on creating. Spending time out there drawing allows me to get intimate with the surroundings. I sink into the place and merge into it. Drawing is a way of planning, deciphering and making decisions about what aspects are important to consider.

This month I’m donating 10 percent of my sea print or painting sales to Paddlers for Humanity. My friend Sinead Fitzgibbon, you may know her from her Physical Therapy shop in Sag Harbor, has been involved with this excellent charity helping to raise funds for worthy nonprofit organizations focused on East End youth. Visit p4h.org for more info.

Casey Chalem Anderson is a Greenwich Village, New York City native who has been passionately creating oil paintings of the Hamptons landscape since she moved to Sag Harbor in 1990. Since childhood, Anderson has been immersed in the cultural and artistic world of New York City. In the mid 1950s her parents moved the family to Greenwich Village to be a part of the bohemian life. As a child she was taken to poetry readings, gallery openings, dance recitals, avant-garde theater presentations and museums.

She began painting seriously at the High School of Art and Design, NYC and studied figure drawing at the Art Students League. She received a B.A. in Art from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied with some of the Bay Area’s most prominent artists including Joan Brown and Elmer Bischoff.

Anderson has worked with both the Peconic Land Trust and the Nature Conservancy, two vital environmental groups working to protect the open land that is so essential to her paintings. She is a founding member of Plein Air Peconic, a group of 10 artists dedicated to depicting the conserved sites of the Peconic Land Trust. She is involved in planning the group’s exhibitions and painting at specific sites. Anderson participates in important local benefits like the recent Cigar Box Art Auction for East End Hospice, the Annual Studio Benefit Tour of the Artist Alliance of East Hampton and serves on the art committee of the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum, helping to plan shows and raise funds.

Through her glorious palette of emerald, lavender, aquamarine, peach and azure blue, Anderson translates her affinity for the landscape by deftly balancing tranquility with visual stimulation. Her paintings are collected by a wide variety of people who wish to access that serenity and the emotional lift of color, which her work so uniquely offers.

This post first appeared as “Breath of Salt Air – Salt Marsh – August 26, 2013” on Casey Chalem Anderson’s art blog, at caseyart.com. Visit the site and click “Subscribe” to receive Anderson’s blog via email.