Key West Art and Magic

One of my favorite give away books that you find in Key West is the Historical Walking Tour magazine put together so lovingly by Sharon Welles. She is, by the way, an incredible artist with an eye just the right shot.. just the right picture .. just the right subject to attract a viewer into a story.

Aside from her colorful, whimsical prints on Key West Conch Houses that have made her famous ...her work on Cuba and botanicals is magical.

The prints from Cuba take you into another world, another time that is both today and yesterday.

Here is a blurb about Key West, written by her.. that I could not improve upon. She says it perfectly.

If you ever get down there...stop by and visit her shop.

My favorite in the set is Chess Table .. La Habana
Why? Don't know..the picture just gets to me.
She's an original.. her work is wonderful.
So is Key West.

http://kwlightgallery.com/Sharon_Wells/sw_b/sw_2_5.html

"Key West, a two by four mile outpost of limestone, still retains the allure and mystique that date from its nineteenth century awakening. A once remote island set just ninety miles from Havana, in the turquoise waters between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, Key West is the last resort in the Florida Keys, a meandering coral archipelago, and sits 154 miles southwest of Miami.
Isolated from the mainland and approached solely by sea until the advent of Henry Flagler's overseas railroad in 1912, Key West is an island dotted with historic structures, weathered by time and tropics, which maintain an elegance and and grandeur.
Few other island cities can claim the grand heritage and magnificent wooden architecture, inspired by its New England settlers. From Victorian mansions to tiny cigar cottages--each home is decked with a pristine splendor. A sense of timelessness pervades. Key West is the Last Resort, a tiny outpost of an island, beyond mangroves, bridges and viaducts that crissross the scintillating blue-green waters of the Florida Keys. Key West sits surrounded by the emerald sea beneath the tradewind clouds. Once a smugglers' den for decades and an artists' colony since the days of the WPA in the Thirties, Key West is a gingerbread banana republic that's transforming itself to a chic, trendy and increasingly gentrified island. The southernmost end of US 1 is here. Latitude 23" 33' North. Brilliant sunsets and sunrises are celebrated; exotic banyan trees drop their thin roots into the coral to spread; tropical gardens are bedecked with bougainvilla and plumeria; fishing and diving is matchless and America's spectacular 176-mile reef predates us all by 500 million years.

Key West is a island chosen by Tennessee Williams, Harry Truman, Ernest Hemingway, John dos Passos, John James Audubon and Cuban revolutionaries as home. A place of extremes, and of cats on hot tin roofs, Bahamian ethnicity, and famous watering holes. This is a place where LIGHT itself has become a timeless subject....where reflections and illuminations, dark shadows and rich, bleached colors have spoken to artists for a century and a half. KW LIGHT GALLERY seeks to present varied works of art, photographs and paintings, which capture the essence of light in all its variations."