Windswept, Provincetown
30x40"
Acrylic on canvas
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Cape Cod National Seashore
Provincetown, Massachusetts
This famous Provincetown landscape is breathtakingly beautiful. On one of my artist’s retreats here, I booked a ride with Art’s Dune Tours. Art’s son, Rob Costa, was my driver and guide that day. Rob shared that when the First Nation Wampanoag people fully inhabited the region, there were thick tree forests along this coastline. European settlers de-forested it, taking lumber for their own purposes. By failing to re-plant what they had taken, they caused the erosion we see today in the form of sand dunes. Without tree roots to help hold down soil and sand, miles of shoreline has been swept to sea over time.
Yet today, environmental volunteers are carefully re-planting. Wild native plant and animal species continue to thrive. If you stand here, as I did, you can feel the power and strength of wind all around you as it moves across the sculpted landscape. I sought to capture the graceful lines and the green, hopeful future that I found in the resilient dunescape.