holiday sale Archives | Carol L. Douglas

December 4, 2019

Busman’s holiday

What does a gallerist do on a snow-day? Hang my show, of course.

Dancing Santa, by Carol L. Douglas

Maine Gallery Guide ran this feature about my upcoming studio Open House yesterday. If you like the Maine scene (especially if you live away), you really should subscribe to their newsletter. It’s the single best resource for our state’s art scene. Here’s a link to the sign-up page.

Meanwhile, my husband is fretting about the boxes and bags of stuff littering our house. “You’ve bought at least three times what you need,” he frets. Parties are where my inner Italian, usually tamped firmly down, comes into play. What’s worth doing, is worth doing to excess, I tell myself—and I buy more.

Part of the mess in my dining room.

No shindig is complete without the last-minute household disaster, and ours came in the form of a cracked chimney tile. This created the opportunity to move our woodstove from the kitchen to the dining room, where it has some chance of actually heating the house. We got the bad news two weeks ago and worked fast. Our mason opened the dining room wall last Monday, only to find a copper water line. All work stopped while we looked for a heating specialist to move the pipe.

Luckily, a young friend is coming to do the job on Sunday. Meanwhile, we have a hole in the dining room wall, and the rest of the room is a shambles. Whatever you do, don’t use our back stairs. The contents of our china cabinet are lined up on its treads. That staircase’s primary function is as a laundry chute, so we’re on pins and needles. If we forget, we’ll shatter a lifetime of useless collecting in a single moment.

And more mess. I bought the wine totally for its name.

Yesterday the storm that’s plagued the northeast this week finally showed up in mid-coast Maine. With so few people out, Sandy Quang left work early and stopped here to collect her mail. The poor young gallerist was about to enjoy a busman’s holiday. She spent the afternoon and evening helping me hang my work. She’s much better at it than me, and she has the additional advantage of a fresh eye. By the time we finished, the snow had stopped. It was a beautiful night, the moon shining dimly through the clearing clouds.

Even though the studio is a mess, I took a video of it for Bobbi Heath. “Are you posting that on Instagram?” she asked. No; it’s a mess, and I’m not very good at video. “People love to see the sausage being made,” she countered. She’s right; the two small videos I posted are being watched. Here’s a link and a link if you are also an avid sausage viewer.

Happy New Year! by Carol L. Douglas

Which brings me to my two resolutions for the new year. First, I’m going to learn to take a decent video. Second, I’m going to master my email list. But I’m always conflicted about email.

Yesterday I timed how many emails I was deleting. It was about 15 an hour, all asking me to donate money or to shop. That didn’t include the ones that ended up in my spam folder, which I watch carefully—Bruce McMillan’s very fine Postcard of the Daywas landing there for a while.

You can meet the original of my 4-H Christmas Angel on Saturday. She’s presiding over my tree, as she does every year.

That overload makes me hate the medium. But it’s a necessary evil, I’m afraid, at least until something better comes along.

Meanwhile, I hope to see you—in person—at my studio on Saturday. Here are the details, as if you could possibly forget them:

Carol L. Douglas Studio Open House
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Noon to Five
394 Commercial Street, Rockport

November 20, 2019

A roadmap to my party

This was sent to me by children’s book author and artist Bruce McMillan, who noted that my December 7 Open House and Studio Party celebrates painter Stuart Davis’ 125th birthday (December 7, 1894).

If going to the Open House make sure to gas up for the trip. The ghost of Stuart Davis may be going with you.

Gas Station, also known as Garage No. 1, Stuart Davis, 1917, courtesy Hirshhorn Museum

Make sure you drive to Rockport ME and not Rockport MA. Oh ME, Oh MA!

Report from Rockport, Stuart Davis, 1940, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Go past the yellow house; there has to be a yellow house somewhere along the drive. [Editor’s note: it’s next door.]

Private Way, Stuart Davis, c. 1916, courtesy Christie’s Auction House

“Davis and his family first went to Gloucester in the summer of 1915, attracted by John Sloan’s enthusiasm. Eventually, his parents acquired a house on Mount Pleasant Avenue, where both Davis and his sculptor mother kept studios; over the next twenty years Davis would spend extended periods on Cape Ann. Gloucester imagery would permeate almost all of the work of this avowedly-urban painter for years to come, but if the accoutrements of the working harbor held a lifelong fascination for him, the particulars of Gloucester space and geography were crucial to his early evolution.” (Stuart Davis: A Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, New Haven, Connecticut, 2007, p. 55)

Hope it doesn’t snow on Stuart’s 125th birthday, that the driving will be clear and dry.

City Snow Scene, Stuart Davis, 1911, courtesy Christie’s Auction House

Davis combined the principles of Henri’s teaching with the technique and palette of his contemporary and close friend, John Sloan. Davis succeeds in rendering a dreary winter’s day in lower Manhattan. With a generous application of whites, Davis works up the surfaces to portray the texture of the snow which is juxtaposed with the more carefully applied reds to develop the architecture in the background. Broad, heavily applied strokes of black are the only device Davis employs to represent the pedestrians with the exception of a few simple touches of orange that delineate the faces of the primary figures in the foreground. Vigorous dashes of greyish-white provide a sense of the blustery, swirling snow, the drama of which is underscored in the foreground figures who are bracing themselves against the elements. Davis employs strong linear perspective to capture the broad avenue and achieves spatial effect by placing two figures in the foreground marking the entry point into the composition. To carefully define the space, Davis uses planar structures along the left side and staggered vertical lampposts and industrial smokestacks to establish depth. Figures are also used to demarcate space intervals in the scene as they are integrated at varying points in the composition.

Don’t stop to gawk at or sketch any boats along the way; you’ll see boats in Carol’s art once you get there.

Sketchbook 19-7: Rosemarie, Boston, Stuart Davis, ink on paper, 1938, courtesy Cape Ann Museum

Hey, skip the boats—really—and head up to heights above the harbor on Route 1.

Boats, Stuart Davis, 1930, courtesy the Phillips Collection

At last you’ll be at the artist’s studio… Carol’s, not Stuart’s.

Studio Interior, Stuart Davis, 1917, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

There will be crowds and crowds, though no servant girls, sorry; it’s self-service. What do you think this is? A restaurant?

Servant Girls, Stuart Davis, 1913, watercolor and pencil on paper, exhibited at the Armory Show. Courtesy Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute

The Association of American Painters and Sculptors originally planned to exhibit only the work of members and those they invited. However, in response to a growing chorus of queries, they asked interested artists to submit works to the Domestic Art Committee for selection. Davis’s work was chosen, and at twenty-one years old, he was one of the youngest artists represented in the Armory Show. In later years, Davis described the 1913 exhibition as a turning point in his artistic development. He called it “the greatest single influence I have experienced in my work,” which prompted him “to become a ‘modern artist.’”

And as the sign says: You Are Here. While everyone wonders, how does Stuart know?

Want to read more of Bruce’s writing? Sign up for his daily postings here. And, my Hidden Holiday Sale has gone public!

November 8, 2019

Welcome, you Bright Young Things!

I’m having a studio party on December 7, but there’s a hidden surprise.

Before I moved to Maine, I did studio open houses annually. The house was already cleaned for Thanksgiving and I’d recruit my reluctant kids to help schlep paintings. I’ve since moved from a county with a million people to one with under 40,000. If I throw a party, will anyone come?

I’m sure the answer is a resounding yes, so I’m opening my studio for a good old Jazz Age shindig on December 7 from noon to five. There will be cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, and because it’s the holiday season, sweets. And you—my faithful reader and friend—are invited.

Here are the details:

Carol L. Douglas Studio Open House
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Noon to Five
394 Commercial Street, Rockport

If you’re from away, you can get excellent rates at local motels this time of year. (I’d have you all stay over, but my house isn’t that big.) Maine is beautiful every day, so why not experience it on a winter weekend?

Midnight Sail from Camden Harbor, 24X30, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas.

Now, for the secret.

Have you wanted to get someone (or yourself) one of my paintings but never quite been able to afford one? I’m offering a few paintings starting this week at steep discounts. These are on a hidden page, which only my readers have access to.

Here’s the link: Hidden Holiday Sale

I’ll be adding discounted paintings four per day from November 8 to November 15 (28 in all). These are discounted 30, 40, 50, even 60% off their list prices. Not only that, but postage to the US and Canada is included.

Hillside farm (The Logging Truck), oil on linen, 16X20, by Carol L. Douglas

Stop back daily, because I’ll be updating them every morning. I won’t start marketing them generally until after November 15. If you want to see them up close, send me an emailand I’ll send you a full-size version of the image.

Why am I doing this? That’s going to be another surprise announcement, but here’s a hint: big changes are in store for 2020 and I need the space. 😉

November 9, 2017

Bits and bobs go on the block

Chrissy Pahucki has created an easy platform to experiment with online marketing this Christmas season. You might want to try it.

This rock study was painted at Upper Jay, in New York. While I might be able to pass it off as Jay, Maine, it would be better to just sell it to someone who loves the Adirondacks.

Over time, an artist’s studio gets overrun with orphan work. These are the one or two paintings from a previous body of work, field sketches that came back from trips and weren’t sold, and work left from plein air events. The more you’re making art, the more these things tend to clog up the works. In fact, if we were to be strictly honest, we sometimes want to sell paintings mainly to make room to make more paintings.

Like most painters, I have a bin of plein air studies. This is where I drop things that I’m not going to pursue. Visitors are welcome to fish through them whenever they stop by, but they’re not orphan work. They’re my repository of ideas.

This spring lake was painted in New York. It should go home to New York.

A non-artist would be shocked by the turnaround time for selling artwork; it can take several years for a painting to find its buyer. This is why we don’t aggressively mark stuff down at the end of each season: we know its sale depends on it being seen by the right person.

I haven’t had a holiday painting sale in several years, since I moved to the edge of the continent. By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, the visitors are gone and all that’s left around here are other artists.

This is the last painting I have left of Vigo County, Indiana.

I decided it was time and that this year I should do it solely online.

Sales events always force me to try to make objective judgments about my paintings. This year, I decided I should mark down work created outside of my current location in midcoast Maine. There are some funny bits and bobs in my studio.

And one of two I have left of central Pennsylvania.

I have only one small canvas left of paintings I did in Vigo County, Indiana. I’d had the opportunity to go out there with my friend Jane while she took care of some family business. I have two small canvases left of a set I did from the top of a hillside on Route 125 in Pennsylvania. I’d had a 360° view of rolling farmland and capitalized on it by turning my easel around on the top of the hill. I got most of the way around before the light failed.

Perhaps the most difficult to add to this collection are my two remaining canvases of the Genesee River at Letchworth State Park. I spent a summer driving down to this spot, hiking my equipment into the gorge and concentrating on painting the rock walls. My goal was to learn to simplify and abstract them, and in these two canvases, I think I succeeded in that. But last year, they were knocked from the wall in my gallery and their frames were damaged. I realized then that they perfectly represent the Genesee Valley but have no place in my current inventory, so they, too, are going on the block.

These were part of a series I did from a mountain top, trying to capture 360° in one painting day. I almost succeeded.

Where am I going to do this? My friend Chrissy Pahucki has started an online plein-air store, here. By this weekend, I expect to have my work up, but that’s not why I mention it. I think other artists ought to try it, too. Chrissy is a painter and art teacher herself, and her terms are very reasonable. I haven’t pursued online selling because I didn’t want to have to add e-commerce to my website. This is an easy way for me to dip my toe into this marketplace.