Current life

Getting ready to head on to North Carolina and our log cabin out in the woods. We left Jamaica nearly three weeks ago and miss it so!  What a way to live a life.  Fresh air, fresh vegetables and a great community. As my previous career washes away, I find that I am picking up the pieces and beginning to paint and draw with the intensity that I had just coming out of art school.  I will be a part of an exhibit in Treasure Beach at end of May - The Breadbasket Festival, celebrating food, culture and art.  And then back to North Carolina to teach a course in Botanical Drawing at the Bullington Horticultural Center in Hendersonville.  Out one door and through another.  Namaste.

Why Jamaica?

My first trip to Jamaica was over the Christmas  holiday in 1972 with 12 of my nearest and dearest friends to go visit Dan who was then living at the Sunrise Cottages in Negril.  It was not long until I fell in love with Dan and Jamaica.  From then on we were always going to Jamaica and except for a brief period, we never missed a year - sometimes going three times a year!  In the 90s we renovated our dear friends house, the Jamaican artist Herbie Rose, in Discovery Bay on the north coast.  It was during that time that we traveled to Treasure Beach and stayed at Coyaba in Billy's Bay.  The experience changed our lives forever.  Walking towards Fort Charles early one morning, on the then dirt road, we were engulfed in yellow butterflies - thousands of them raised up from the ground and it was as if we were in a Fellini movie - from then on we were totally addicted to Treasure Beach.  Returning to the USA to take care of family and this and that, we continued to return to Treasure Beach as often as we could.  In 2008 we purchased property in Beacon, just outside of Treasure Beach, overlooking the sea.  First Dan retired to build the house that I designed and then I retired and here we are...back where we began in the country of our choice. 

Fairwind - the name came early one morning as I sat meditating on our veranda overlooking the sea....it was a calm morning - and, very gently, a breeze moved up the hill from the sea and onto the veranda...a soft and sweet breeze...and so I thought "what a fair wind"...Fairwind was also the name of my father's sloop when I was a child growing up on the gulf coast of Florida.  My brother and I sailed her many times over the years. It seemed, then, appropriate that our cottage be named Fairwind, in honor and rememberance of my family.