Annino's Watercolors

                                                       

updated 9/1/00

Hi !  Welcome back to my site. If you haven't visited before, there are some links at the bottom of this page to my gallery, bio, and other art sites.

I spent all of my younger years on Long Island, NY and much of that time on the Great South Bay. My first boat was a small 11 foot dingy that my brother and I found abandoned on the beach. Our first salvage prize (in spite of the ad my father made us take out in the local paper in search of the owner). We fastened a 2 x 6 to the bottom to act as a keel and scrounged an old awning for a sail. Using an oar over the transom as a rudder, we had our first sailboat.  Since it leaked quite a bit we would usually take one of our younger brothers along (for a sail, we said)  to act as bailer. We graduated to a gaff rigged catboat next and on to bigger and better boats as time went on. Many of these were work boats as we earned money while in college digging and selling clams. We had to really work hard to make a decent wage as the price for clams averaged 1 cent a piece (we got $3.00 a bushel for cherrystones, $5.00 a bushel for Little Necks and $0.75 a bushel for the large chowders) . Compare this to the average current price for clams of  ten to fifteen cents a piece. I've mated on fishing boats and crewed on sailboats from Newport to Bermuda. It is natural therefore for me to paint nautical scenes of the sea and the ships that sail on it, especially those that depend only on the wind for power. You might say that I have sea-fever.

                                                       

                                                      Sea Fever

                                   I must go down to the seas again,
                                   to the lonely sea and the sky,
                               And all I ask is a tall ship
                                   and a star to steer her by, 
                               And the wheel's kick and the wind's song
                                   and the white sail's shaking,
                               And a grey mist on the seas face
                                   and a grey dawn breaking.

                                                                                            John Masefield

This summer has been a great one for the Tall Ships with celebrations in Newport, Boston and New York in the Northeast section of the USA. Thus, I think it is appropriate that this newest update of the website be dedicated to the Sea and Ships.

To navigate this site, please click the  appropriate button shown below.