During beach vacations at Kismet, with a short walk west along the sand dunes of Fire Island beach, one comes to the Fire Island Lighthouse. The Fire Island community of Kismet borders on the Fire Island National Seashore, a vast beach of sand dunes and fine grained white sand. I believe it to be one of the best beaches to spend your beach vacations at. Many of my beach paintings are sketched at the Fire Island National Seashore, and, I hope, portray my love for beaches. Sand Dunes: it’s all about sand dunes on one side of you, and the pounding ocean on the other side. This is the setting for beach vacations: from sketchbook to preliminary compositions to completed watercolor beach paintings. On the far right of this beach painting is the Fire Island Lighthouse. The beach grass gently bends in the summer breeze. The breeze is warm and the day is leisurely. I feel lucky to use my beach vacations as “work days at the beach“, and lucky am I, to feel as equally relaxed in the woods and mountains.

One of a triptych of beach paintings, and printed on hand made cotton paper from Europe, these beach paintings have been checked for longevity by Wilhelm Research. These researchers have determined that my Fire Island beach paintings will not show signs of fading, detectable to the human eye, until 2060-2070.

The Fire Island National Seashore was established in 1964 "for the purpose of conserving and preserving for the use of future generations certain relatively unspoiled and undeveloped beaches, dunes, and other natural features which possess high values to the Nation as examples of unspoiled areas of great natural beauty in close proximity to large concentrations of urban population.”

Certainly Kismet does not have a large urban population, although NYC is a mere one hour drive west! Beach vacations at Kismet belong in your future plans for beach vacations. Hope to see you there sometime.