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A Kid Crabbing
Watercolor, 22" x 15"
by Bill Hudson
Original with custom frame ......... $1,650
Destiny
...... by Bill Hudson.
Growing physically and emotionally through early adolescence into adulthood can be difficult years. Success depends on discovery, family, friends, interests, chance, commitment, lessons learned, attitude, and good choices. It’s a time of self-doubt when one’s destiny may conflict with restrictions and external expectations.
My childhood began in Parkville, a Baltimore neighborhood. All of us kids played outside, with little adult supervision, while being educated in fun and mischief by the Wentworth brothers, Mike and Dickie. These were the idea guys …. natural born mentors who taught life lessons with a self-developed technique that involved little thinking, no planning, and very little preparation followed by a demonstration that often ended catastrophically. I was usually sucked into their schemes with suspect encouragement like:
At age 12 ( Mike and Dick knock on my front door. Dickie is holding 2 keys.)
Mike …. “Billy, ya wanna go for a ride?”
Me …… “Hey, sure. With who?”
Dick …. “With us.”
Me …… “In what?”
Mike …. “In dad’s car. It’s OK. Our parents are gone for the day.”
Pause: Note the simplicity of Wentworth logic.
Me ……. “So, who’s driving? Ain’t that a stick shifter?”
Dick …. “That’s where you come in, Billy. You’re good at figuring out those kinda things.”
Every day the Wentworths illustrated the enormous difference in outcomes when one fails to distinguish the fine line between an extremely poor decision and a good one. (ref Newsletter November 2016: Peeing on the Electric Fence)
Fortunately, my father was born and raised a waterman in the small fishing town of Greenbackville, Virginia (population 200) on the Chincoteague Bay. And that’s where I spent a month or so each summer with my grandparents on the Eastern Shore… 145 miles from Baltimore.
Grandpop ran the only store and dock in the harbor where all crab and oyster boats unloaded their daily catch and refueled. Pop was there at 4 AM cutting pork rinds for trotline crab bait. Each day in the store ended around 1PM, as watermen finished telling their stories while drinking Nehi sodas or Yoo-hoos and eatin’ Vienna sausage and orange, peanut-butter-sandwich crackers.
Greenback was complete freedom with a clear conscience. Pop provided an old white wooden rowboat and taught me how to fish, crab, and make chicken-wire pots for eels and blue crabs. Crabbers also gave me their discarded rusted pots and daily handfuls of menhaden bait. And I was off . . . deciding where to row and drop those pots. Soon I enjoyed more excitement crabbing than any mischief Mike and Dick could dream up.
I understood the merit of working at something you love with others doing the same. My fascination with boats, harbors, watermen . . . any area where land and sea meet . . . has lasted a lifetime and remains my motivation to paint.
And so, this painting “A Kid Crabbing” is a reflection of my adolescence where I found self-esteem and value among the natural beauty of marshlands.
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Join me this March where I have a booth in the:
The Pacific Coast Sportfishing
Tackle, Boat, Travel and Outdoors Show
Orange County Fair & Event Center
88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626
March 6-9 2025
Thur Mar 6 12 PM – 7 PM
Fri Mar 7 12 PM – 7 PM
Sat Mar 8 10 AM – 7 PM
Sun Mar 9 10 AM – 5 PM
This is the 15th year of the West Coast’s premier outdoors show. All 7 halls of the OC Fairgrounds are filled with boats, fishing tackle, apparel, travel destinations, seminars, live music, and maritime art.
Tickets are $23.18. Kids 12 and under and active-duty military are free.
Other than galleries, this is my first show in a while and I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be in my booth with help from some of my family. I’ll have many recent, custom-framed originals and unframed, double-matted limited editions ($150) ready for any standard 18” x 24” frame. Hope to see you there.
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