"Sunrise St. Augustine Beach" by artist Brenda Hofreiter

This is a painting of St. Augustine Beach at sunrise. I stayed at a lovely beach house here during a paint out at Crescent Beach, FL. The beach house had a lovely 2nd story deck where we, (3 of the participating artists) would gather for coffee and sunrise every morning. The beach sunrises were something to not be missed, and I must of snapped a whole disk of images of them for future paintings.

During a bout of bad weather, I started this painting in my studio. This is to date the largest painting, at 48" x 60, that I have created. (During it's creation, I affectionately referred to it as "gigantica"). My desire was to create a painting that you felt you could "walk right into" and this one does just that. I used several of my photo references to compose and create this painting. I love the way the glow from the morning sun reflects upon the waves, glinting off the high points of sand and back lighting the sea oats that frame those spectacular cloud formations.

I love looking at this painting at different times of day and in different lighting. It has a glow all it's own and really changes the space that it is in. I always get a wonderful feeling
of peace and all the promise of a new day from this painting.