An experience in the country of Panama shaped a new art style for me and brought me into a new era.

Why Panama for vacation you ask?

In December 1991, my brother JD invited our family to the country of Panama for Christmas, where he was stationed with his wife Annie and son Stanton, who was about one at the time. I had started homeschooling both my sons through middle school and it sounded like the perfect get-away for the holiday.

I teased my friends that we were going on vacation with Indiana Jones. I had no idea just how close I was to the truth!

The trip started out a bit slowly. After being dropped off, the winter weather got worse and Buffalo Airport closed, so our adventure started the next day.

At First it was Fun

Once we got to Panama, it was a fun time for the first week or so. We took part in a party for the locals to celebrate the building of a new school for them built by Air Force volunteers.

We hiked down into a dormant volcano and went panning for gold in the rainforest.

We marveled over the 6’ long pair of iguana who lived across the street, the leaf cutter ants, the toucans flying overhead and the tree we watched that went from its summer leaves to fall color, dropping everything and then new spring growth in the one month that we were there.

JD took us around to see the aftermath of the raid on Noriega, explaining everything that went wrong with the timing of that raid.

We took a couple of side trips to the beach and a trip to see the Spanish forts… then our trip turned dangerous!

Things Started Going Wrong

We had booked an air taxi to the Caribbean side of Panama and then a boat ride to the San Blas Islands to stay with the Kuna People for a couple of days. We flew into a small airstrip in the forest near the beach that we were told was one of Noriega’s drug run airstrips, now abandoned.

The trip by boat (actually a dug-out canoe) was, I imagined, about an hour away, but could have been longer. They had a motor attached to the back so that the trip was much shorter than paddling and hid us under black plastic tarp to keep us from breathing the gas. I felt like we were being abducted!

By the end of the trip, I was so sick, but felt better once we landed.

The time on the island was wonderful. We learned about their culture, snorkeled to a sunken ship and ate a lot of fish.

I ended up swallowing water into my lungs when I gasped from being frightened. It appeared that the bottom of the ocean dropped out from under me…causing me to choke as I tried to get back to shore. I coughed and threw up for days after and this was the cause of me getting pneumonia three times within the next 5 years.

BUT, that was not the dangerous part.

The View was Inspiring!

On the way back to the mainland we got back into dug-out canoes while it was still dark in the early morning. The sky was pitch black and you could see millions of stars. While we silently made our way through the water it was totally surreal. We were disturbing the plankton and their phosphorescence lit up like the stars.

You could not see the horizon in the dark and there was no difference between the star-studded sky and the black water with the plankton all lit up. I felt like Peter Pan was travelling in his clipper ship across the sky!

This is Where it Got Dangerous

Along the way we got lost.

We were in the boat for hours and we had a huge leak in the boat! The Kuna are really laid-back people and eventually one of them started to bale out the water …in slow motion! He was NOT keeping up with the water coming into our boat.

My husband, Jim got angry at the situation and grabbed the bucket from the Indian and baled like crazy.

The rim of the boat was only about an inch above the water at this point. My brother was quietly getting out his life jackets he had packed in his duffle for his family, while my boys and I sat silently on our bench trying to assess what we would do if the boat sank.

JT had turned eleven on this trip and I knew he would keep a cool head, but I also knew I would not be able to rely on Jim for help since there was a young Kuna woman with a newborn on the boat with us. Jim would definitely go to save that baby first.

Nine-year-old Kevin and I were on our own. It was becoming quite light now and the fog near the shore was lifting so we finally found our way back to the airstrip. We never did sink, thanks to Jim, who was exhausted after two hours of bailing on his own.

Once we got ashore, I saw that our plane was still waiting for us. Bless the pilot… he had to have been waiting over 3 hours at least. However, also waiting for us were a dozen guerilla mercenaries, loaded to the teeth with arms, just like in a war movie…but this was real!

My brother leaned into us and whispered, “Don’t tell them I’m military”.

They blocked us from getting on the plane and wanted money from us to continue our journey. Jim was madder than a hornet after our harrowing boat ride … yelled at us to get on the plane, get it started, and he would handle it.The mercenaries believed Jim to be our leader so accepted the terms. Once everyone was on the plane, Jim took out his wallet and yelled at the soldiers that he would not pay them a dime, then ran to the plane. As he was jumping onto the plane he yelled, GO, GO GO! We took off with the armed men standing there stupefied.

The Events of the Day Stayed with Me

I’ll never forget that massive sky that was not discernable from the sparkling sea. It was a beautifully mesmerizing … surreal.

Except for plenty of experimentation during my childhood, my painting style as an adult was always realism. I spent most my time painting portraits of company presidents and horses, with a few pets and families thrown in for good measure.

But I saw a whole new world during that trip to Panama and it affected me deeply. I started seeing everything as more of a mystery, connecting the dots that I’d lost as a child and my realistic world turned more imaginative.

My art started reflecting more humor, spontaneity, and creativity. In turn, life mimicked art.

Conclusion

Years after this Panama vacation, I finally decided to create an artwork that centered around that actual boating experience and “Adrift” was born. Of course, not the literal scene, but with imagination and meaning.