In 2006, I visited the tiny town of San Blas, Mexico.

One of the first things I noticed was the number of pickup trucks driving around, 3 or 4 soldiers in the back, 2 in front – with submachine guns, dark glasses, camouflage uniforms and all.

Kinda freaked me out – I’m not accustomed to such a blatant military presence. I never did get used to seeing those trucks everywhere.

The beach there has such a strange configuration – the breakers are about 100 yards out from the beach, and the water between the breakers and the beach edge is about 3″ deep. You can pretty much walk almost all the way out to the breakers without getting even your knees wet!

I must have taken 40 bazillion photos of this strange phenomenon, but couldn’t get even one to correctly portray the effect. Ah well.

I’ve been playing with pastels a lot lately, and here’s one of the beach, looking over that shallow water at the edge, facing south towards Puerto Vallarta.

It’s dark – mainly because I used black paper – experimenting.

What do you think?

SAN BLAS #1
Pastels on paper, 9″ x 12″ original. Available.