John Murray classes week of January 5, 2015

Happy New Year 2015 and welcome to my classes.
I would like to start the term with a suggested assignment.
Think of a personal adventure that you have had, preferably as a child and try an image based on the emotional load of that experience.
Don't be concerned with an accuracy, drawing or figuration.
Be free and loose.
Below are a few of mine and the childhood experience related to them.

I was 10 years old when myself and another boy decided to swim across Quincy Bay from Wollaston Beach to Squantum MA.
We set out late in the afternoon and swam until the last of the moored boats and the open water began.
At that point the other kid,whose name I can not remember,decided to swim back to shore.
I wanted to push on, and did.
The water got deeper and choppier more oceanic as I swam.
The Long Island bridge loomed ahead in the distance. 
The rocky shore of Squantum was very far in my view from low in the water.
The fishy smell of the east wind tide filled my senses. 
Sharks,whales,blackfish all sprang  to mind from the depths beneath my blue cold feet.
At last I reached the barnacle encrusted boulders of the Squantum shore. 
I had landed on the back yard of an ocean front house barefoot and clothed only in a small boys bathing suit. 
I scrambled out of the water and looked back toward across the bay from where I had come. 
The original shoreline appeared as a scumble of buildings and masts a long way off in the late afternoon light.
It must have been 5:30 on a late summer afternoon and I had no stomach for swimming back shivering and tired.
It was close to supper time and I had to get home fast,not in another 1 1/2 hours, the time it had taken me to swim across the bay.
I ran up through the yards and found a street. 
I stuck my thumb out and was soon picked up by a middle-aged man in a sedan. 
He drove me the 3 or so miles around the peninsular to Wollaston beach.
I thanked him and ran through the glass strewn alley that went between the Bowling alley and Elsie's Tavern and led from the beach to my backyard.
I was not too late for supper.

See you next week, John.