Boat Parade

Lighted Boat Parade

  

The 28th Annual Christmas Lighted Boat Parade in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama, was Saturday, December 14.

Beginning at Lulu's at Homeport Marina in Gulf Shores at 5:30 p.m., the Parade traveled east down the Intracoastal Canal, passing The Wharf, rounding Bear Point and headed south toward Ono Island where it made a westward turn heading toward Perdido Pass.

The Parade then headed north circling Terry Cove and back southward to the Perdido Pass Bridge where it made a turn to the west ending at Zeke's Landing Marina at approximately 8:30 p.m.

From our vantage point on the pier along the canal, we were able to see all the boats parading by.   The pictures aren't so wonderful, but you get the idea!

The boats were blaring Christmas music, which could be heard across the water for miles!

Anyone could sign up to participate with their personal boat.

We loved seeing the boats decorated with Christmas lights cruising the waterways in the annual lighted boat parade.

I've always wanted to see the parade, and this is the first time we've been down there at the right time!  It was magical!

Van Gogh Museum

Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

Vincent Van Gogh was a post-impressionist painter of Dutch origin whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. After years of painful anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died aged 37 from a gunshot wound, generally accepted to be self-inflicted (although no gun was ever found).  His work was then known to only a handful of people and appreciated by fewer still. Van Gogh began to draw as a child, and he continued to draw throughout the years that led up to his decision to become an artist. He did not begin painting until his late twenties, completing many of his best-known works during the last two years of his life. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, consisting of 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches, and prints.  His work included self-portraits, landscapes, still lifes, portraits and paintings of cypresses, wheat fields and sunflowers.

This was a definite highlight of our trip to Amsterdam.  I'll hope you  enjoy today's blog and savor the masterpieces and words of Van Gogh.

Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers, traveling between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught for a time in England at Isleworth and Ramsgate. One of his early aspirations was to become a pastor and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium where he began to sketch people from the local community. In 1885, he painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palatte at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later, he moved to the south of France and was influenced by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color, and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style that became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.
The extent to which his mental health affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticize his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of illness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh's late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and "longing for concision and grace."

What a sad and tortured figure he was, but, oh, my, what a painter!