I can’t speak for people who live in the rest of the country, but in the northeast, March is ill-tempered. “Comes in like a lion and out like a lamb?” Hah. March comes in like a psychopath and goes out like a moody teenager, and only dreaming of spring green helps us endure it.
Spring Greens, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $652 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
This week, we’ve been getting four seasons per day-snow, blustery winds, just enough warm sun to fool us into shedding our winter coats, then whipping rain and more wind.
It blew so hard yesterday morning that our windows creaked with the stress. And starting tonight, we’ll get more snow. In fact, if you look at the map below, you’ll see that the whole northern tier of the country is having tempestuous weather.
We all need a dollop of spring green, and fast.
Painters are naturally attracted to towering spruces, mountains, rivers, and other iconic structures; for one thing, they make composition easy. However, most days in most places aren’t like that. The abstraction of the everyday makes for fascinating paintings, because the artist has to let go of the crutch of those classic symbols. That forces us to focus on colors, shapes and brushwork.
When the world looks like this, you’ll be glad of a painting that looks like that.
I hope this painting evokes the smell of warming earth, green shoots sticking up through old grass, and black willows opening along a tree line. To me, that’s a perfect day. The simplicity of this painting is misleading; you’ll be looking at it a lot longer than a painting with a more obvious subject.
Ice Cream, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Street art
Street artist Banksy is believed to be behind a ‘mural’ painted in Finsbury Park in London. It is a spatter of green paint that implies the leaves on a nearby pollarded tree. Banksy is, of course, a favorite of the high-end art market. He’s the guy who once got $1.4 million for shredding a painting.
Meanwhile, Chris Kanizi, 65, who owns the Golden Chippy, also in London, has been told to paint over a mural that he paid to have painted on the side of his shop. It’s a fish, and it reads, “Fish and Chips: A Great British Meal.”
“Why are planning laws, not to mention property laws, continually bent in order to favour the pseudonymous artist [Banksy] when they continue to come down so heavily against anyone else who has a go?” asked columnist Ross Clark “Banksy is not just tolerated: some of his works have been listed, so the owners of the buildings on which they have been sprayed couldn’t even remove them if they wanted to.”
The same conversations happen here in the Land of the Free as well–here in Arlington, VA, and here, in Conway, NH, to cite just two examples.
Is it art or vandalism or just plain advertising?
Grain elevators, Buffalo, NY, 18X24 in a handmade cherry frame. $2318 includes shipping in continental US.
America has a long relationship with roadside art, which even lent itself to a style of architecture called Googie. Drive down Route 1 through Saugus, MA and you’ll pass signs from the heyday of Googie. Some of the businesses are gone, but the signs remain. After 70 years, they’re protected landmarks.
So why do we stop people from building roadside commercial art today? Ross has a simple answer: advertising art is for oiks, not the well-bred fans of Banksy’s art.
Princess Street, Dawson City, Yukon Territory, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard. Includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Art or vandalism, redux
Those of us who love art have been troubled by the recent trend of protesters damaging works of art. In Britain, where this is beginning to look like a national sport, prosecution has been hindered by the Criminal Damage Act 1971. If the perpetrator believes the owner would have consented if he or she understood the circumstances, then the damage is excused. This codifies the common-sense idea that if you see a baby in a hot car, you’d be right in smashing a window to rescue it.
If that was your Velázquez that was just destroyed, well, you just didn’t properly understand the threat of climate change, and now that you do, it’s fine.
Yesterday Lady Chief Justice Lady Carr delivered a judgment on protest law that should close that loophole. Perhaps it will help hurry this fad into obscurity before more Constables, Van Goghs and other priceless pieces of our patrimony are damaged.
Larky Morning at Rockport Harbor, 11X14, on linen, $869 unframed includes shipping in continental US.
Those dark nationalist feelings
Landscape painting has always been about pride of place. We love the Hudson River School in part because they’re so optimistic about America’s heritage and destiny, on which rested their themes of discovery, exploration, and settlement. The Canadian Group of Seven painted the energy of the Great White North, and helped establish the Canadian art ethos. JoaquÃn Sorolla was a proud Spaniard; Anders Zorn was a proud Swede.
Tilt-A-Whirl, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Bobbi Heath sent me a post yesterday called How to Deal With Copycats, which I promised I’d read before I blogged this morning. “I’m never that worried about what other people are doing,” I added. She told me not to bother reading it but to just write about the subject, so that’s what I’m doing.
A few decades ago, a woman came up to my booth at a show and took a photo of one of my paintings. “I want to copy it,” she told me, apparently unaware of the etiquette of stealing others’ ideas. (First rule: don’t broadcast your intentions.)
“Good luck with that,” I told her.
There are some brilliant copyists out there. They’re called forgers, and I admire their ability to channel their creativity into chemistry rather than the business of brushstrokes. I’m too idiosyncratic myself, and I suspect most of us are. We have an inner vision that’s too strong to be overridden.
I am insufficiently dead to attract the attention of forgers. Those other copyists are called ‘amateurs’ and if their copying doesn’t affect the value of my work or my reputation, I don’t care what they do.
In Control (Grace and her Unicorn), 24X30, $3,478 framed, oil on canvas, includes shipping in continental United States.
Sometimes copying is about learning
I look at the work of Tom Root for his brushwork, Tara Will for her audacity, Cynthia Rosen for her palette knife virtuosity, Eric Jacobsen for his scumbling, and Colin Page for his color. I have no hesitation about copying passages to be sure I understand how they achieved the effect that interested me.
Is that being a copycat? No; it’s being a lifelong learner.
Best Buds, 11X14, oil on canvasboard, $1087 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Paintings are mostly about what isn’t stated
It’s your inner vision that makes you unique, both as a painter and a person. I’ve taught painting for many years and one of my go-to lessons is to ask students to copy a masterwork. Can they make a perfect JMW Turner or Rockwell Kent or Emily Carr? Absolutely not; their own personality always seeps out through every brushstroke. That’s even true when I ask them to concentrate on brushwork.
A person who wants to copy your work or style is devoid of that strong inner vision. That means he or she won’t understand your viewpoint in the first place, which would make real mimicry impossible.
Beauchamp Point, Autumn Leaves, 12X16, oil on archival canvasboard, $1449 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
What is style, anyway?
Years ago, a painting teacher told me that heavy outlines were my style. He was wrong; they were just an inability to marry edges (which I hadn’t been taught yet). That’s an argument for not even thinking about style until you’ve developed serious painting chops. Style is different from being stylish, to which we should all aspire.
Style is the gap between your inner vision and your ability to render it. That disconnect may be caused by bad painting chops. It can equally be caused by something subconscious that elevates, rather than diminishes, your vision.
Vincent van Gogh is an eloquent example of this. His obsessive need to put his inner vision on canvas tells us he never quite succeeded in matching up his brush with his mind. We’ve all benefited immeasurably from that disconnect, since his style has profoundly influenced modern art.
But what about AI?
I feel about AI the same way I do amateur copyists. At this point in its development, it’s easy to pick out AI-generated art online. Maybe someday AI will be good enough to look like it has a heart, but we’re not there yet.
Deadwood, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.
I painted Deadwood, above, for a solo show at Roberts Wesleyan College’s Davison Art Gallery. The work was an exploration of the relationship between God and man as seen in nature.
At the time, I was thinking about how our mistakes impede the flow of life. “But fallen branches can actually change the course of a waterway,” my hydrologist friend Ken Avery told me at the opening. It’s the butterfly effect made apparent.
I’d never thought about it like that.
Branches that fall into streams tend to collect other sticks into logjams. This debris can alter the flow of the river itself. There is great force holding such river jams in place; in fact, breaking a logjam is something best left to experts as it can be very dangerous.
Deadwood is a metaphor for decisions we’ve made that seemed to permanently hobble us. Sin and failure drop into our lives and mesh with other sins and failures. By the time we’re adults, we have a logjam of troubles pushing one against another. These start to define what we understand to be our character or personality. “She’s temperamental.” “He is afraid of his own shadow.” “Of course he has a drinking problem; so did his father and grandfather.” None of these are true definitions of our characters, but the distortion caused by the sad accretion of troubles upon troubles.
Deadwood in situ. Photo courtesy of Ivan Ramos.
The great lie of Satan is that each of us is uniquely and fatally flawed. Neither is true, of course. Our sins are generally common, and we can correct our course as long as we’re still breathing.
At the time I painted it, Deadwood seemed very unfinished, but this is a painting that predicted where I was going as a painter. These works make us uncomfortable at the point of creation, but they ring true over time. That’s the big reason why I’m not quick to wash out rough starts.
(By the way, an altered life is not a ruined one; if this resonates with you, you may want to read this book.)
Early Morning at Moon Lake, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
I have never once gotten up in the morning and said, “gee, I can’t wait to get outside and climb Beech Hill.” That goes double for winter, but I still do it every day.
I’ve been doing serious daily exercise (and, yes, I mean seven days a week) as long as I can remember. Even during chemo, I’d push my drip bag along on a pole and keep walking. In fact, I turned down a port because it would mess with my running schedule.
On the Hard, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
I’m not telling you this to be a twit; I believe exercise is an important daily habit, no different from brushing my teeth or making my bed. Although I’ve had two serious cancers, I’m still here. I’ve also avoided the typical diseases of aging like diabetes and heart disease.
The physical benefits of exercise are well-documented. Exercise improves brain health, including memory and learning, executive function, processing speed and attention span. It helps us manage weight, reduces the risk of disease, and strengthens bones and muscles.
Coal Seam, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Exercise and creativity go hand in hand
There’s a demonstrated link between exercise and creativity. “Even a single, brief bout of aerobic exercise can ignite creative thinking,” wrote Dr. Chong Chen, author of a narrative review on the topic. He looked at 21 studies exploring the link between exercise and creativity.
Both the type of exercise and its duration affect its impact on creativity. For example, strength training doesn’t seem to do much for brain plasticity. Too much exercise and we stop benefiting (and may even decline).
What is creative thinking, anyway?
Mid-century psychologist Dr. J. P. Guilford identified two types of creative thinking: divergent and convergent. Convergent thinking is arriving at the single best answer to a question. Divergent thinking is the process of exploring many possible solutions. Divergent thinking is associative and flexible, while convergent thinking relies on working memory and fluid intelligence.
You might think that divergent thinking is all we need as artists, but in fact we need both. First, we come up with our ideas; then we winnow and execute them.
Peace, 8X16, $903 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
How does this work, physiologically?
Regular aerobic activity can trigger structural changes in the brain, including increased brain volume, particularly in the hippocampus, according to Amir-Homayoun Javadi, author of Joggin’ the Noggin. But these adaptations occur over time. What happens in the short run?
Javadi suggests that acute exercise temporarily improves our blood flow, bringing fresh oxygen to the brain. Furthermore, exercise that doesn’t demand much thought (like my daily walk) actually dampens activity within the prefrontal cortex, allowing the mind to roam free, without constraints. That may be why walking shows better promise for creativity than yoga, which requires mindfulness.
The biggest bang for your buck
Activities like treadmill running and dance help with convergent thinking. Meanwhile, walking helps with divergent thinking and is the only form of exercise associated with heightened originality. However, it’s apparently useless at enhancing convergent thinking. On the other hand, if you have a hill or mountain nearby, the uphill slog can benefit your convergent thinking and the downhill amble will help your divergent thinking. Presto! Beautiful, balanced brain!
One more thing
If you know a school administrator, policy-setter, school board member, or parent, wave this post in front of him or her and suggest-strongly-that school policy allow kids lots more time untethered from their desks. Immobilizing our children, whether in school or in front of the television, is surely one of the great injustices of our current age.
Apple Blossom Time, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
I first learned about Jay Hambidge‘s theory of Dynamic Symmetry in a workshop taught by Steven Assael many years ago. I was looking for the Holy Grail of composition and fiddled with Dynamic Symmetry for several years before putting it in my Folder of Fundamentally Flawed Design Ideas, along with the Golden Ratio, Silver Ratio, Fibonacci Sequence, Rule of Thirds, and a lot of other stuff I’ve mercifully forgotten.
You can go look it up and try to deal with the arcana of root rectangles if you want; the bottom line is that it sets up a static system of space division that sometimes looks like this:
The details depend on who you ask, and somehow the star-grid never seems to work out the same, depending on who’s interpreting it. I’m just showing you it as I wrote it down in that classroom at the Art Students League. I’m not suggesting you use it; if you look at Jay Hambidge’s paintings, you’ll observe that they tend to be static. I much prefer the simple instruction Don’t Be Boring.
Just start painting?
I’m working on a commission to paint from a photograph taken in deep woods, but I can’t seem to make any decent division of the wall of green. I could easily over-egg the diagonals, but the woods in my reference is flat, and I want to respect that. That worked very well for Gustav Klimt’s beech grove paintings, which I adore, but I have different goals in mind.
I’ve looked at painters of the woods whom I admire, I’ve drawn repeated iterations, and I’ve rendered it in watercolor. I still wasn’t liking the space division. On Thursday I started to commit a cardinal error of painting: “I can’t think of any other way to draw this, so I’ll just start painting and see if something occurs to me.”
I know that’s wrong; I’ve told my students not to do that at least a gazillion times. If it doesn’t work as a drawing, it’s never going to work as a painting. Value is the first thing the eye sees, and if it makes no sense in greyscale, it’s unlikely to be riveting in color.
Spring Greens, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $652 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
Saved by the bell
I was about to start transferring my drawing to my canvas when I thought, “what the heck, I’ll just grid this with Hambridge’s Dynamic Symmetry grid instead of a simple square transfer grid. It’ll at least be more of a challenge when I’m transferring the drawing to the canvas.”
That was an eye-opener. I moved things and checked their positioning in terms of the dynamic symmetry grid, and suddenly found that with a few tweaks, it will read just fine.
Fog over Whiteface Mountain, 11X14, $1087 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
When you’re stuck you need to mix it up
I am unlikely to use the Dynamic Symmetry grid ever again, and certainly not at the design phase. However, I’m glad I had it tucked in the back of my mind when I needed to veer out of the groove that had become a rut.
There is no design idea that is universally applicable, and no idea, including Dynamic Symmetry, that is completely useless. It’s helpful to understand how other artists answer design questions against the time you, too, are stuck.
When a composition is off-balance, off-putting, or just excruciatingly dull, try to set it against some sort of framework and see what’s going right or wrong. That’s why I ask my students to do composition exercises, and why my first question in critique is always, “what kind of compositional framework is this? What are the focal points?”
Possum, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.
On Wednesday, I mentioned our late Jack Russell Terrier (or Terror, depending on the day). Above all, Max was a fearless hunter, a skill that often got him in trouble. He was capable of snatching a songbird in midflight, and squirrels and chipmunks stayed away when he was outdoors.
Sadly, he seldom got an opportunity to exercise that skill in a positive way. However, he’d periodically grow restive, whining and pointing at some blank section of wall. I learned to recognize that as a sign we had invaders in the house. Most commonly they were mice, which are easily dispatched. Memorably there was once a rat behind the dishwasher.
It was an old house with nearly a century’s worth of paint on the moulding. One day I noticed that a cold air return was shining silver. It had been licked and chewed clean. “Oh, dear, it’s lead paint,” I thought. “Max is going to lose whatever little sense he started with.” I watched him carefully and realized he spent his whole day hanging around that duct.
When Mr. Opossum realized he’d been captured, he was not a happy camper.
Then I opened the basement door. Max flew down ahead of me. There was an opossum on the top of a shelving unit where we stored extra glassware, appliances and other things that no longer brought us joy. Max went berserk trying to climb the shelf. The opossum retaliated by throwing things down on Max. Together they made a terrible mess. The good news was, I had lots less to get rid of when it came time to KonMari my life.
At the time, we had a young lady named Abi living with us. Abi really, really wanted to keep the opossum. “They make good pets,” she insisted. I might have tried had Max and Mr. Opossum not been sworn enemies. Plus, he had very sharp-looking teeth, and opossums have opposable thumbs on their hind legs. That could only lead to trouble.
Abi with her consolation opossum.
For a while, it was a stalemate. We put delicacies in a trap; he ignored them, or worse, fished them out. It was nearly Thanksgiving and I kept my pie plates in the basement. That’s how I finally won. Mr. Possum found my piecrust irresistible. (The recipe is here.)
Our good friend did not go gently back to nature. We drove him to a county park on the other side of the Genesee River, which is wide, deep and fast as it enters Rochester. He didn’t like the idea and hissed all the way. With one final scowl in my direction, he ambled off into the shrubberies. I’m not sure Abi has ever forgiven me.
Shela Fero Geiss and Matthew Fero with their parents’ two labs, private collection, oil on linen.
Dogs make lovely painting companions. Before I could bring my daughter along on painting trips, I camped and painted with my Jack Russell Terrier for company. He was a pleasant traveling companion (most dogs are), and he acted as an Early Warning System. As artists’ head are often in the clouds, painting with dogs is helpful.
I’ve never been approached by a bear or a threatening person while painting. At the hoary old age of 65, however, my left hook ain’t what it used to be. I appreciate the security painting with dogs provides.
Ever-loyal Guillo running circles around me.
My current dog, Guillo, is a mutt with a very calm disposition. He’s happiest when he’s with his people and he’s uncritical of even my worst daubs.
Of course, you must provide your painting pup with the basics: water, shade, and, if appropriate, food. In my state, a dog can be unleashed if under voice control, but that’s not true everywhere. Even here I have a tie-out in my truck. I wouldn’t let him roam free next to a busy road or near farm animals.
Painting with dogs isn’t always trouble-free. I periodically run across daft dog owners. This week it was the owner of a senescent Basset Hound whom I met while hiking. The human kicked and stomped at Guillo as we passed. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, as my friend Catharine would say. Guillo made a wide circle around her, but another dog might have answered her aggression in kind.
Dr. Martha Vail-Barker and her poppet, Poppy, oil on linen,private collection.
It’s your problem to keep your dog (and yourself) under control. “He just wants to be friends,” is no excuse when your dog has jumped up far enough to have given a thorough pelvic exam.
Earlier this year, Catharine was knocked down by a German shepherd, resulting in injuries that took weeks to heal. “What if that had happened to an elderly person?” she asked. (She’s 76.)
How do you know if your dog is a good boy? (Here’s a satirical answer to that question.) If you hear yourself say, “I’m sorry, he never does that!” it’s time for training. If you hear yourself say it twice, you’re the problem.
In a lifetime of dogs, I’ve broken up more than my share of fights. Twice, I’ve been bitten hard enough to break the skin. Both times were preventable.
The Beggar of St. Paul (detail) featuring dear old Max, oil on linen.
Dogs are simple empaths; they’re sensitive to the emotional states of people, and they only have two responses to threats: fight or flight. These are deeply ingrained in the evolutionary history of all animals, including us (although we can occasionally talk our way out of trouble).
Since 80% of Americans live in urban or suburban areas, our dogs spend much of their lives leashed. That cuts off the flight option, meaning that stressed dogs learn to react to threats with aggression.
A smart person learns to identify hyper-alertness, muscle tension (raised hackles), growling and barking as signs of a stressed dog. The trouble is, these can also be signs of an excited or playful dog. It sometimes takes some nous to know the difference.
If you have a highly-excitable dog who reacts badly to strangers, he might not be the best candidate for painting with dogs. But if you have a laid-back mutt, he’ll make great company.
Night Hauling, 1944, Andrew Wyeth, courtesy Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Yesterday my friend Barb and I peered at Night Hauling, a 1944 tempera painting by Andrew Wyeth. “I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen bioluminescence in the sea,” she said.
“Well, I also imagine at that time most people were using lobster boats with engines,” I countered.
“Not if they were stealing traps,” she said, and we both laughed.
In 1944, Wyeth was still trying to figure out how to emerge from the shadow of his famous father. It would be four more years until Christina’s World proved he was ‘not your father’s Oldsmobile’. Night Hauling is magical realism built on an utterly firm foundation of realistic drawing and painting; it’s what NC Wyeth was famous for and what his son and grandson would carry forward in American art.
The Wyeths all had individual and personal visions. Grandpa and grandson are insouciant and entertaining; Andrew is melancholy but with humor. Their message is so clear because it rests on perfect painting chops. Mediocre painting never gets in the way of what they’re trying to say.
I realize we haven’t got easy themes like American Exceptionalism at our disposal anymore, and much art is just too politicized to be bearable. However, no painting should be without meaning, or it may as well be wallpaper. That’s why I constantly ask the question, “what were you trying to say in this painting?”
Seascape Study with Rain Cloud (Rainstorm over the Sea), 1824-28, John Constable, courtesy Royal Academy. It would be hard to articulate the thesis of this painting, but it sure resonates.
Bad Art for Sale Near Me
“I count twenty paintings that this group did in one day,” a reader wrote last week. “The event went on for a week, so that’s a hundred paintings! You know all of them can’t be particularly good.” I didn’t need him to add that, because he included a photograph. The word I’d use to describe them is pedestrian, and that’s possibly being generous.
“They’re all going on sale, too,” he added sadly. I never get too bent about Bad Art For Sale Near Me because the people who can’t tell the difference are not my audience. But he’s right; it does devalue painting when so much mediocre stuff is on the block. I love plein air events but I think they’ve hit the point of oversaturation, and now I carefully pick which ones I do.
I firmly believe that the only way you get better is to keep painting, lots. My old friend Marilyn Fairman used to say, “I saved another canvas today,” after she scraped out what she’d worked on all day. I never do that because I think it keeps me repeating what I’m comfortable with. But I also don’t paint over old paintings; they have impasto that’s tough to cover. Needless to say, I have lots of duds. If you’re doing it right, you should too. And you should not confuse your mediocrities with your best work.
We often change our mind about work we’ve finished. I recently found something I dislike in a painting I used to love. I’ve been teaching color bridging recently, and I realized that one passage of that painting would have benefitted from it. (No, I’m not going to edit it. That way lies madness)
I used to have an annual party where I’d saw through every painting I hated in my inventory. I have a new idea to recycle them. But the important thing is to recognize that you’ve grown and changed, and to stop letting your mediocrities drag down the gems in your work.
Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
“You have a crush on every boat,” my husband once said. Of all the boats I’ve ever loved, schooner American Eagle is at the top of the list. She’s not the only windjammer I admire, or even the only windjammer I’ve painted. But I get to teach on her every year, she’s always in perfect nick and I never have to do any of the maintenance. That’s down to Captain John Foss, who restored her impeccably, and Captain Tyler King, who’s keeping up the good work.
A quick glimpse will tell you why we had no onboard electronics on this lovely old girl. I wish I still had her but, as they say, it’s complicated.
I grew up in western New York, where my family kept a 30′ wooden sloop, first at Buffalo on Lake Erie and then at Wilson on Lake Ontario. As a kid, I figured that since the Great Lakes are smaller than the ocean, they must be safer. It’s only been since I’ve moved to the Maine coast that I’ve realized how extreme the weather in my hometown of Buffalo is. The Great Lakes are prone to unpredictable squall lines, seiches, and storm surges. Electrical storms are very common, even in winter, when they create the phenomenon known as thundersnow. Periodically, the water in Lake Ontario turns over, making a noticeable, sudden change in the temperature that results in fog. The Great Lakes have heavy freighter traffic and fog can drop in an instant. It’s less nerve-wracking now, but in my youth “onboard electronics” were limited to running lights.
American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.
On the other hand, the Great Lakes are consistently deep. If you can get out of the harbor channel without grounding yourself on last winter’s silt, you’re unlikely to hit anything submerged. That’s different from the Maine coast, where rocks stick inconveniently out of the water, or worse, not quite out of the water. When I first sailed on schooner American Eagle, I told Captain John that the thing that gave me pause about potting around in the ocean by myself is not knowing what was on the bottom. “Lobster traps, pretty much,” he laughed. And sailors today all use depth finders, which take the sport out of holing one’s hull.
However, the weather on the Maine Coast is simply not as foul as it is on Lake Ontario. (A friend who lives in Scotland tells me that Rochester is more dreich in late fall and winter than is Edinburgh.) It rains less here, and there are fewer storms.
I see boats as powerful symbols of the human condition. We’re always either sailing into trouble or getting ourselves out of it. Breaking Storm, above, is about the latter, and I’ve got a painting of the windjammer Angelique on my easel that’s about the former. (Sorry about that, Captains Dennis and Candace!)
American Eagle rounding Owls Head, 6×8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 unframed includes shipping and handling in the continental US.
Breaking Storm is my favorite of all my schooner American Eagle paintings, but I realize it may be too large and expensive for some people. That’s why I painted American Eagle rounding Owls Head, just 6X8. It’s softer and more suggestive than the larger painting, and there’s no sense that the storm has abated.
