"On the Beach" by Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs

I think what I love about this print by the late, great Margaret Burroughs is that it is the complete opposite of imagery normally associated with summer excursions to the shore. It shares with the viewer another side of the beach experience. Most beach imagery features bright, clear skies and vivid pastel colors. But no sun bakes these vacationers; the sky is dark and streaked with lines suggestive of wind or rain. Often the people in beach scenes stand out from the landscape, appearing as obvious visitors, almost invading a place of natural tranquility. Here the people are embedded in the landscape. They seem almost a part of it, especially the stoic, reclining woman in the foreground.

Heaven rips across the sky. It is as if this beach is in the eye of a tornado, which stretches wider than the earth. 

There are the heavens, and here are we, sitting statuesque like an Egyptian Sphinx, bending in an effort to stand, holding on to babe or ball, reaching out. Here are we.