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Category: Acadia National Park

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Frog weather

I have decided to repost my BDN blog here so that my non-Maine friends who object to the survey can see it.

Class at Schoodic Point.

Class at Schoodic Point.
My pal is a righteous church-going grandmother from Allegheny County, PA. Yesterday, she was offered $50 to perform an immoral act. We were both a little confused about the economics. If that’s the going rate, prostitution really doesn’t pay well.
In reality, she’s a residential advisor at a center for adults with developmental disabilities. This is empowering and important work. I teach painting, which isn’t as immediately beneficial to society, but is probably equally important in the bigger picture.
A happy student

A happy student
I’ve been painting since many of you were in short pants, and teaching since you were angst-ridden teenagers. You could read my long and boring CV here, or you can cut to the main point: lots of people have become better artists by studying with me.
I understand from my pals that it’s hotter than blue blazes in my birth state of New York. I was dismayed to see photos from last weekend’s Battle of Fort Niagara reenactment in Youngstown, NY. The parade grounds appear as parched, brown and dusty as the ancient walls of the fort itself. It’s been hot, humid and hazy downstate, too, where there’s been an air quality advisory for metropolitan New York. In fact, that’s the way it’s been going for much of America so far this summer.
Concentrating.

Concentrating.
Here in Rockport, Maine, it is hitting the 70s, but there is a cool breeze. In Acadia, it might even be a few degrees cooler. That’s one reason you should consider joining me in Acadia’s Schoodic Institute for this year’s Sea & Sky workshop from August 7 to 12.
The Schoodic Institute isn’t open to the public. To stay there, you need to be part of an educational program. That makes it quiet and secluded. I’ve watched its transition from a former navy base to its current incarnation as an educational institution. Someday we will all brag about having been there.
Me, demoing.

Me, demoing.
Some of the best painting on the East Coast is there. High granite cliffs drop down to the misty green depths of Frenchmen’s Bay. Atlantic surf roars onto Schoodic point in the clear light of Maine, which is like no other light in the northeast.
If you’re a history buff, you know that this is Acadia’s centennial year. That makes our workshop part of an amazing run of history.
Our lobster bake.

Our lobster bake.
The cost for this whole shindig including instruction, meals, accommodation, and a lobster feast is just $1600. Compare that to other workshops and you’ll realize it’s a great deal.
Yes, I have a few openings left. I believe that the people who go are those who are meant to go. Perhaps that’s you. If so, email me soon so you can snag one of these last spots.
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Doing well by doing good

Asticou Azalea Garden, designed with the financial support of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in the late 1950s.
Earlier this month, financier David Rockefeller announced that he is giving a thousand acres of land on Mount Desert Island to the Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve on the occasion of his 100th birthday.
The park at Stourhead, designed by various landscape architects, 1741-80. English landscaping tremendously impressed our American gilded-age fashionistas.
Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve is comprised of two gardens built in the late 1950s. Asticou Azalea Garden is patterned after a traditional Japanese garden. Thuya Garden and Lodgeis a semi-formal herbaceous garden in the English style. The donated land abuts the Thuya Garden property and includes carriage roads, hiking trails, fields, woodland and streams.
Duck Brook Bridge in Acadia National Park
In 1910, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. built a hundred-room cottage in Seal Harbor called The Eyrie. Acadia was a gift to the American people, but it also effectively sequestered Seal Harbor from the hoi polloi who holidayed on the Maine coast.
The Eyrie was torn down in the early 1960s.
Rockefeller and his neighbors were concerned about ‘overdevelopment,’ by which they meant the possibility of neighbors like you and me. They created an association, donated 5,000 acres to it and gave it to the Federal government. Rockefeller bought more land and donated it; this formed the nucleus of what is now Acadia National Park.
A car venturing on the Acadia carriage road, 1920s.
With its carriage roads, Acadia was very much a combination of English park and public accommodation. So it is fitting that it would also have its formal gardens in the English style (Anglo-Asian gardens being an English garden theme), and fitting that they would end up being public spaces.
I’ve always found it kind of charming to imagine American robber barons aping their British cousins in the creation of their Stately Homes, their vast Parks, and their Gertrude Jekyll-inspired gardens. Many of those British homes have been transferred to the National Trust; many of their American equivalents have become museums and parks. It almost gives you faith in the democratizing tendencies of Father Time.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in August 2015. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.
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Beautiful Winter Harbor

Part of Winter Harbor Yacht Club’s fleet.(Credit unknown.)
Yesterday I saw this photo essay of Winter Harbor, ME in Yankee Magazine. I hope you click through and enjoy the pictures.
This is the closest town to Schoodic Institute in Acadia National Park, where my workshop will be held August 9-14, 2015. (There are just a few openings in the workshop, so if you’re interested, I hope you let me know soon.)
Winter Harbor itself is a quaint little fishing community of 500 people with a general store, a gas station, and a great little Main Street.  It includes a summer colony called Grindstone Neck. This colony was formed in 1889, modeled along the lines of Bar Harbor. As usual, I stumbled across it in my perambulations while looking for a painting site.
This group has its own yacht club, which in turn has its own yacht. The Winter Harbor 21 (or Winter Harbor Knockabout) is a 31′ racing sloop designed and built by Burgess & Packard, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, specifically for the club.
Cloverly, the first boat to be rescued and restored. (Credit unknown.)
In 1906, club members Fredrick O. Spedden and George Dallas Dixon Jr. commissioned  Burgess & Packard to build seven boats to a specific design. These were launched in 1907. Two more were added in the 1920s.
By mid-century the small fleet had been dispersed until only two remained active. In 1976, the club’s then-commodore, Alan Goldstein, decided that he wanted to find and buy one back. After two years, he found Cloverly rotting in a barn. His enthusiasm was catching and by the mid-80s, all nine boats were restored and  back in Winter Harbor.
Near Winter Harbor, ME. I promise you that Yankee Magazine‘s photos, here, are much better than mine.
The Winter Harbor 21s are the oldest intact one-design racing sailboat fleet in the United States.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.
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All good things

It’s helpful when you can stay on the right side of the road. It wasn’t alway possible.

As I toured the Institute grounds, the first fat flakes started to fall. I’d been warned that a significant storm was expected at midday and would move in fast. I don’t have studded snow tires; I don’t even have snow tires. For a few minutes, I thought I’d left it for too late.

The first sign of the weather changing was the wind picking up.
 Still, Western New Yorkers are accustomed to snow. Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse have the highest snowfall of all American cities. Our storms are amplified by the open water of the Great Lakes.

Drift ice is among my favorite things.
Coastal Maine adds a fillip to the experience: a fine layer of ice under its snow. The first twelve miles of our trip was on back roads that wouldn’t see a salter or plow for a day or so. The Mainers might have been slithering sideways on the hills in their pickup trucks (which are notoriously bad on snow) but they were taking it in stride. So did my little Prius.

Snow-covered rocks off Blueberry Hill.
The northeast is having its second hard winter in a row. Very few people visit Maine in January, but it is beautiful. I no longer do much wintertime plein air work. Still, our world is lovely in the deep snow.

The open road doesn’t look too bad, does it? But there’s absolutely no traction and my poor little Prius was choosing its own route.
Ah, home sweet home…

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.
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Heading East Northeast

Winter on the Schoodic Peninsula.
Having finished my work in Waldoboro for the moment (whew!) I’m heading for Acadia today—right into a winter storm. This is the kind of vagary my southern friends have no experience with, but which we northerners anticipate. My car is not brilliant at bad roads, but I’m carrying a shovel, blankets, Clif bars, a candle and matches, and I can wait out any disasters.
The part of Acadia I’m heading to is that northernmost corner near Winter Harbor.
Acadia is the oldest national park east of the Mississippi, founded in 1919. The Schoodic Peninsula Historic District near Winter Harbor dates from 1929. Specifically I’m headed to this area, the northernmost part of the park.
In 2002, the National Park Service acquired the former naval base located on the Schoodic Peninsula and renovated it into the Schoodic Education and Research Center. This is where our 2015 workshop will be based.
Schoodic Peninsula surf.
My kit is in the back of my car, but the likelihood of painting in the teeth of a blizzard is slim. Still, I do have a watercolor set and if the visibility is not completely whited out, I expect I can do a study or two. If nothing else, I can check out the accommodations for my students.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.
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Better than a marked-down sweater, any day

Sea & Sky Workshop
August 9-14, 2015 
Acadia National Park
If Santa Claus screwed up this Christmas, it’s up to you to remedy it, and I don’t mean by running down to the mall to score some great Boxing Day deals. By next summer, they’ll be a distant memory, but we’ll be gearing up to paint at Schoodic Point from August 9-14, 2015
You’ve got less than a week to get the $125 early-bird discount. Four slots of the twelve are already filled, but I DO want to be able to pass on these savings to you. And I can’t do that if I don’t have your registration in hand by January 1.
Corinne at Owl’s Head in 2013.
I spend a great deal of time stalking and bagging perfect venues for my workshops. I’m really excited about this one. In 2014, we painted the ‘quaint’ Maine coastline, along the sheltering coast of Penobscot Bay. This year, we’re going for the thundering, open ocean.
Schoodic Point is far from the hustle of Bar Harbor, but it is has the same dramatic rock formations, pounding surf, and stunning mountain views that make Acadia a worldwide tourist destination.
The places we’ll go!
Open sea, stunning views of Cadillac Mountain, and veins of dark basalt running through red granite rocks are the dominant features of this “road less traveled.” Pines, birch, spruce, cedar, cherry, alder, mountain ash, and maples forest the land. There are numerous coves, inlets, islands, and lighthouses.
Here is the brochure. Here is the registration form. I’m off to Philly for the weekend, but take a moment to sit down and send your registration form in. I promise you it will be a lot more satisfying than a new sweater set in 2014’s color of the year.
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Night rambling

Intrepid nighttime painters in last year’s workshop.
Robert F. Bukaty is a photojournalist in Freeport, Maine. He recently wrote about a series of nighttime photos he did in Acadia using his red headlamp (similar to a photographic darkroom safe light) as a paintbrush. The images he created are lovely, and you can see them here.
Nocturne, by Nancy Woogen, painted in Rockland in 2013.
“The dim red light is just bright enough to let you see what you’re doing without ruining your night vision,” Bukaty wrote, which fascinated me. I have a basketful of headlamps, both the kind that strap on and the kind that clip to your visor. They are an uneasy compromise. They were intended for nighttime hiking, walking, or running, and they’re awfully bright for painting. Bukaty’s got me wondering if there is some way to tone them down. The red lamp Bukaty used wouldn’t work, because it would obscure hues, but there might be something in that idea.
Maine has a million night skies, sunsets, and sunrises to inspire.
Inevitably, Maine draws us into painting the night sky. Most of us come from the populous bands of the Northeast, where our night views are seriously corrupted by light pollution. That great big bowl of the night sky, brimming with stars, is arresting every time we see it anew.
Night sky near Belfast, ME.
Bukaty goes to Acadia for his stargazing because there is little light pollution there. My 2015 painting workshop will be at the Schoodic Institute in Acadia, which means we will have ample opportunity to see the unpolluted night sky.
Pack your headlamp!
Lovely watercolor nocturne by Bernard Zeller, painted in Belfast in 2014.

Remember, you’ve got until December 31 to get an early-bird discount for next year’s Acadia workshop. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here. 
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The Chautauqua Movement

We’ll be holding our own ‘improving’ workshop again next August. This is the Dyce Head Lighthouse in Castine, ME, painted by me.
“You wrote, ‘And as with so many things in 19th century America, the vacation was tied up with religious reform,’” an alert reader wrote me yesterday. “What does that mean?”
Ours is a country prone to religious revival. Historians call those periods our ‘Great Awakenings’. America experienced a Third Great Awakening from the middle of the 19th century until the early 20th century. This particular revival had a strong dose of social activism in its nature. The three greatest movements of the 19th century all sprang from this religious impulse: abolition, temperance, and women’s suffrage. So too did the early middle-class getaways, the Chautauqua movement.
1915 postcard
The first Chautauqua was organized as a training camp for Methodist Sunday school teachers. This outdoor summer school format grew so popular that it was copied all over the country in the form of ‘daughter’ Chautauquas.
These were far more than religious tent revivals. They offered lecturers, theatrical readings, music, art, and more. When Theodore Roosevelt called them “the most American thing in America,” he was correct, for they enshrined the American do-it-yourself spirit of bringing learning to places that were too small, too remote, too new for established culture.
The Lyceum Magazine advised members to continue to challenge popular amusements with improving ones, even in time of war.
Having taught painting for a long time, I know that this love of learning is engrained in us. Speaking of which, I have fixed the year on my workshop brochure.
Lunch break, Castine Maine, Carol L. Douglas
The real dates are August 9-14, 2015. Dramatic, inspirational Schoodic Point in Acadia National Park will be our base. This is the quiet side of Acadia, far from the hustle of Bar Harbor, but with the same dramatic rock formations, pounding surf, and stunning mountain views that make Acadia a worldwide tourist destination.
Of course, all skill levels and media are welcome. From beginner to advanced, in watercolor, oils, acrylics, pastels — bring any or all with you. Because bringing family along was so popular in 2014, we’ve arranged to make it possible this year, too.
Water Street View, Castine, ME, by Carol L. Douglas
Just make sure you get back to me by the end of the year to get that early-bird discount!

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here. 

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Signs and Portents

Foliage study, 9X12, unframed.
Dreamt of an angel of death appearing in winter white and gunmetal grey (my dreams are nothing if not chic), awakened by the soft chirp of text messages arriving in the middle of the night, and then this: I realized the entire print run of my workshop brochure have the wrong year on them, and I don’t have time to have them reprinted.
Oh, well. Other than that, they’re really pretty.
Azaleas, 6X8, Highland Park. Some days it doesn’t pay to be too realistic.
I’ve lost count, but I sold more than a dozen paintings on Black Friday, against a very relaxed background of music, company, wine and cheese. I haven’t done retail sales in a long, long time, and I’m not really set up for it. I’ve lost the key to my cash box (which contains my receipt book). It’s a good thing nobody needed to pay by credit card, because my card reader was in my grandson’s crib along with all my other bookkeeping tools.
Ellwanger-Berry Garden, 14X18, oil on canvasboard.
Today I get to clean it up and return house and studio to their normal luster.
There’s no Cyber Monday around here, but if you want to look at my inventory, you’re welcome, of course. No, it’s not set up for online commerce; you can call me or send me a text or email and we will finish the sale.
Foliage, 12X16, unframed.
Meanwhile, I’m going to be figuring out what to do about those brochures.

I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Read all about it here, or download a defective brochure here. It’s really 2015, not 2014.
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Holiday gift guide #4 (the gift of learning)

Sea & Sky Workshop

August 9-14, 2015 
Acadia National Park
Dramatic, inspirational Schoodic Point in Acadia National Park will be the base for my Maine workshop this year. This is the quiet side of Acadia, far from the hustle of Bar Harbor, but with the same dramatic rock formations, pounding surf, and stunning mountain views that make Acadia a worldwide tourist destination.
The Schoodic Peninsula is more secluded than the main body of the Park; only about 10% of park visitors ever get there. Its main feature is Schoodic Head, at 440 feet above sea level.
Open sea, stunning views of Cadillac Mountain, and veins of dark basalt running through red granite rocks are the dominant features of this “road less traveled.” Pines, birch, spruce, cedar, cherry, alder, mountain ash, and maples forest the land. There are numerous coves, inlets, islands, and lighthouses.
Of course, all skill levels and media are welcome. From beginner to advanced; watercolor, oils, acrylics, pastels — bring any or all with you.
Concentrate on painting

Your meals are included so you can forget about cooking. That’s five nights accommodation, private bedroom with shared bath at the Schoodic Institute in Acadia National Park.

There will be a lobster feast on Sunday evening, and all meals and snacks up to and including breakfast on the day of departure.
And of course there will be morning and afternoon instruction, Monday-Friday—or even a nocturne if you want to try it.


Rates

Private room with shared bath at the beautiful, secluded Schoodic Institute, with room, board and instruction is just $1150.

Non-painting partner sharing a painter’s room is just $500 including all meals.

There are limited family apartments available for a $500 upcharge plus $325/person for meal plan. Contact me ASAP if you want one of these; they go quickly.

All rates include 8% Maine hotel tax.

Discounts

$125 Early Bird discount if your deposit of $300 is received by December 31, 2014.

We’re offering a $50 discount to New York Plein Air Painters OR returning students.

To register

Space is limited! Email me for a registration form.

Refunds available up to 60 days prior to start, less a $50 administration fee.

Don’t forget my holiday sale, next week!