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Category: Genesee Yacht Club

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Mostly, what’s changed are the trees…

Safe Harbor, 20X24, oil on canvasboard, almost finished.

I started this during the last year in which my painting partner Marilyn Feinberg was still in Rochester. It is as big a canvas—20X24—as I ever do en plein air. That size usually takes two or more sessions to finish, but without Marilyn around to schlep up to Irondequoit with me, I seemed to lose the thread. The painting sat on my counter for two summers before I got around to finishing it. (Of course the first time I went out to work on it this summer, I was rained out.)

The Port of Rochester is my favorite place to paint in Rochester, but I don’t do it as often as I should. It’s in the northwest corner of the city; I live in the southeast corner. It seems like I have to travel cross-lots to get there. But once I get there, I wonder why I’ve stayed away so long. (I am grateful to the folks at Genesee Yacht Club for allowing me to paint on their property; they’ve always been gracious.)
My new set-up makes larger canvases more manageable.
Buffalo is at the end of Lake Erie. Its weather blows off the lake and funnels through the city. Rochester is on the side of Lake Ontario. That occasionally produces east-west bands of different weather. This was true today: overcast at my house; raining lightly at Ridge Road; sunny and clear at the lake.
One of the reasons I love painting at the Port of Rochester is that it’s never boring. It’s one of two ports on Lake Ontario that accepts cement by freighter, so sometimes one sees a freighter pushing its way upriver past the recreational boat slips. And I saw two trains pass by within feet of the boat slips today; none of the summer people seemed remotely fazed by them.
Most of the boats were just as I left them (although some were reversed in their slips), and the clouds were piling up to the southwest exactly as they were the last time I was there. Surprisingly, the mature trees across the channel had grown noticeably. I texted Marilyn to tell her that. “It’s one of the things I always notice when I come home to visit,” she responded. “It’s a weird feeling.” I agree. We think of those big trees as timeless and the human structures as changeable, but that’s not exactly how it seems to work.

I have a little more work to do (the reflections, modifying light levels, painting the rigging) and it’s done.
If you’re signed up for my July workshop in mid-coast Maine, you can find the supply lists here. There’s one more residential slot left; I’m dying to know who is going to fill it. August and September are sold out , but there are openings in October! Check here for more information.
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Heavy Weather

The scene, on a warmer, brighter day.
“Lemme tell you something,” said Mr. Steptoe. “The moment I’ve got Duff’s dough in my jeans, this joint has seen the last of me. I’m going back to Hollywood; that’s what I’m going to do, and if you’ve a morsel of sense you’ll come with me. What you want wasting your time in this darned place beats me. Nobody but stiffs for miles around. And look what happens today. You give this lawn party, and what do you get? Cloudbursts and thunderstorms. Where’s the sense in sticking around in a climate like this? If you like being rained on come to Hollywood and stand under the shower bath.” 
(From Quick Service, by PG Wodehouse, c. 1940, Doubleday Doran)
As far as I got on an earlier day, painting with my old pal Marilyn. This is a big field painting, 20X24.
I left Maine with a hankering for painting boats. (They’re really one of my favorite things.) As I had to be in Irondequoit anyway, today seemed like a great opportunity to run up to Genesee Yacht Club to finish a painting I started a few years ago.  I don’t like to paint from photos—not because of some arbitrary rules about what constitutes plein air, but because I see better in real space. And this painting has been sitting around since Marilyn Feinberg moved to Florida and quit being my painting buddy.
The forecast was for intermittent light rain. That’s very doable with oil paints, so I packed my stuff and headed north. However, there’s a fine line between light rain and the kind of rain that works your paint into a solid emulsion. What we were getting this afternoon was on the wrong side of that line. We live in a naturally damp city that’s currently stuck in a heavy-rainfall pattern. There isn’t much one can do about it except move on to something else, like cleaning bookshelves.
Notice, however, that I’m not complaining. It may be dark, cool and rainy here too much of the time, but we don’t often have forest fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, or any of the other natural phenomena that plague other parts of the country.  “Just throw your mind back to Hollywood, honey. Think of that old sun. Think of that old surf at Malibu,” said Mr. Steptoe. For my money he can keep it.
There is only one slot open for my July workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME, and August and September are sold out.  Join us in July or October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.