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Category: Lakewatch Manor

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Join me this Saturday for Wine and Watercolors in the garden

Saturday, July 20, 2013, 4:30pm until 7:30pm
Hollyhocks, by little ol’ me.

Summer is just bustin’ out all over, and it makes me want to paint!
Join me for an afternoon of laughter, stories, and painting some sweet little greeting-card-sized watercolors in Lakewatch Manor’s lovely gardens. (There will be an indoor studio option if weather threatens.) Our innkeepers will have—as they always do—lovely wine, flower essence iced tea, and delectable morsels, which will encourage painters of all skill levels.
Rumor has it that daylilies are edible, but I’d rather just do tiny watercolors of them, thanks.
LIMITED SPOTS require an advance reservation. $40 covers all supplies and refreshments. Bring a friend and you each pay $35.00. Call 207-593-0722 for reservation or questions.
The poppies and peonies will be finished, but there is always something in bloom in the northeast during the summer.
The next day is the first day of my July workshop in mid-coast Maine. There’s one more residential slot left in July; 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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Amazing new diet plan! Take up drawing!

Watermelon & Cherries, by Brad Marshall, oil on canvas board, 11×14. Executing this luscious painting probably elevated Brad’s mood by 22%, but who can tell when he’s already so darn cheerful? It’s for Rye Art Center’s annual Painters on Location in September, and I imagine it will elevate the mood of some lucky collector too.
A report in the Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science suggests that drawing pictures of so-called comfort food can also have positive effects on mood, reportedthe Wall Street Journal.
It’s hard to imagine drawing Texas-style comfort food like King Ranch Chicken Casserole or Frito Pie, since they basically look like lumpy stew. So it’s a good thing this research was done at St. Bonaventure University (here in upstate New York) where “comfort food” means pizza and cupcakes.
Wayne Thiebaud, Four cupcakes, 1971. Oil on canvas, 27,9 x 48,3 cm. Is Thiebaud a very happy man? He certainly should be; he painted enough cakes.
Drawing pizzas improved the subjects’ mood by 28%, while depicting cupcakes and strawberries boosted spirits by 27% and 22%, respectively. Drawing peppers improved moods only by 1%.

Peppers, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, by little ol’ me. They made me more than 1% happier to paint, I swear.
 
Maybe it’s because they made the poor test subjects do their drawings on empty stomachs, but I find it hard to imagine that drawing anything would fail to elevate one’s mood. Especially peppers.

I know one thing that’s going to make me very happy: my July workshop in mid-coast Maine. Nothing is happier-making than painting with great friends in a brilliant place. There’s one more residential slot left in July; 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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It’s painting weather!

We’ve been stuck in this weather pattern for weeks. It’s hard to paint in.
I got an email this week that read, “This being the 4th of July weekend, summer is officially here and it is time to do your plein air painting. No more excuses about it being too cold or whatever…”
Clouds stacking up to the west.
That is very true, but it has been tremendously wet up and down the East Coast. A little rain isn’t a problem, but deluges are. We’re complaining of Florida weather here: it rains every day. My Floridian friends are complaining that it’s not just raining every day, it’s raining all day, every day.
Lyn sketching as she debates whether she will have time to paint this view.
We had a preacher visiting from Nigeria recently who mentioned in passing that Americans love to complain about the weather. He’s right about that—if it’s 90° F., it’s too hot; if it’s 60° F., it’s too cold. And yet we live in a kind of peaceful Paradise here.
Some of us had the good sense to work from the porch.
All kinds of weather are good. They’re just not necessarily good for plein air painting.
But not Carol and Joe… and that’s a good thing, because they both did fine paintings.
On Wednesday evening, an electrical storm rumbled into Rochester just as my students and I were getting in our cars to drive to Cindy and Danny Barben’s farm in Honeoye Falls. Driving south out of town, there were tree limbs down and flooding in the intersections. I picked up my cell phone half a dozen times to cancel, but I’m caught in a conundrum of modern life: a third of my class only texts, a third emails, and a third can only be contacted through Facebook. Quick changes in plan aren’t that easy.
If I ever painted from photos, I might be tempted by this view. Note how wet the fields are here in the Genesee Valley.

But it was all fine, because shortly after we arrived, the sky cleared, with tremendous peach and blue clouds rising in great heaps to the south and west. (The moments after a rainstorm are often the most glorious of the day.) And although the sky feinted, it didn’t really start raining again until we were packed up to go home.

Cindy guiding in a missing painter.

You can study painting with me in Rochester (Wednesday evenings this summer), or you can study painting with me in Maine. 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.
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The Winnowing Fork

I threw out 90% of my drawings, keeping only those of sentimental value. This could be nobody but my friend, clothing designer Jane Bartlett, posing for a quick sketch.

I recently bought new pads of newsprint , and they tipped me into chaos. I finally faced the truth that there wasn’t a single corner in which to shove one more thing in my studio. It wasn’t a simple question of emptying one drawer to accommodate the newsprint, either. My whole studio had become a tangled skein of art supplies, finished work, and projects under way.

And this, of course is my long-term plein air pal Marilyn Feinberg, being unusually still.
Twelve man-hours later, the winnowing fork has done its duty, and I can think again.
Of sentimental value for a totally different reason. This is the cartoon for a painting I envisioned of my doctor removing my staples after my first cancer surgery. I probably will never paint it, of course, but it would have been more fun than the surgery. Imagine that green florescent hospital lighting of old…
Artists tend to be pack-rats—after all, one never knows when that beaver skull or fake mustache will come in handy. But at a certain point, the clutter overwhelms. I paint best in a spare, very ordered environment, and much of my working day is spent trying to stop myself from trashing that.
The plein air board stash. Neatly reduced (although I suspect there’s another box of them in my frame shop).
Out went the acetate and rubylith left over from the days when designers stripped in pages. Out went stained or marked paper.  Out went damaged prints.
About a decade ago I decided to save all my gesture drawings. I have no idea why; I’ve never looked at any of them since. Out they went, too, netting me a full flat-file drawer for other purposes. I tossed a large stack of mediocre drawings, keeping only a few of sentimental value and a couple of painting cartoons that still amuse me.
I’ve finally realized that rubylith and amberlith and hand-stripping tabloid-size pages are never coming back. OK, I realized that a decade ago, but I still thought I could think of something to do with all that stuff. It’s on the curb now.
About once a year, I toss out several pounds of paintings I no longer like. I slash these canvases and boards, because I never want them returning, zombie-like, to embarrass me in the future. I reserve the right to edit the story of my life, and that includes my work.
What remains is a mixture of unfinished work that is in some way instructive, finished work that’s just “resting” outside frames for a short while, and a whole range of stuff I’m still not sure about.

Next up, my frame shop. That’s a scary thought.

Now that I’m so darn organized, I can start thinking about what’s coming up. 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.

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This is the story of a small miracle

The caption reads, “Life is so beautiful with hope and courage.” It was hand-painted and a gift from a friend when I was fighting my own battle with cancer.
Some of you don’t like miracles. You’re free to write this off as a mistake or a flat-out lie.
I have a friend and painting student who is suffering from a rare and tenacious form of ovarian cancer. She was rushed to hospital in great pain and is waiting for yet another emergency surgery. There is no time that’s convenient for a mortal battle, but when you have two young teens at home, well, that seems like particularly bad timing.
One of the many things I resent about her cancer is that it has taken away her joy in painting. She is—when healthy—an exuberant watercolorist, but since her diagnosis, she’s laid her brushes aside.
This morning I found a patch of sweet peas that the city mowers had missed. I picked some. I decided that I could augment them from my own half-drowned garden to make her a bouquet. And I could bring her my watercolor kit and maybe that would somehow give her the psychic energy to follow in Manet’s footsteps and paint a few watercolor florals from her sickbed.
Everything my friend needs to paint like Manet: a pocket watercolor kit  (which was a gift from her to me many years ago), my field notebook (which was a gift from Jamie Grossman a few years ago), my brushes, a folding tank, and an atomizer. I told her she is unlikely to do a worse job than some of the watercolor sketches in this notebook.
Vases tend to get lost in hospitals, so I looked around for an empty jar. Then I remembered that I had a lovely but cracked vase that I’ve been trying to throw away for years. It was given to me when I was fighting my own cancer. Sadly, I dropped and shattered it, and my husband mended it.
My sentimental attachment to this vase always warred with my irritation at the all-too-visible crack. I never quite managed to toss it away. But, I reasoned, my friend would not mind a cracked and mended vase and it would be a way for me to let go of the darned thing.
I pulled it out, and looked in vain for the mend. It just isn’t there.
One of Manet’s little sickbed still-lives.
I was so bewildered, I asked Sandy to try to find the crack for me. She couldn’t see it either. And then she directed me to this piece in this weekend’s New York Times, which ends with this quote:
When a vase falls from the mantel, most people’s first impulse is to dispose of the shattered relic, throw it out, begone the tainted thing, the broken dream.
Stop. Don’t do it. Get a broom and dustpan. Pull out your tiny brush. Save every piece, every jagged shard. Do not lose a sliver. I have witnessed the miracles. I have seen them happen under my own hand.
Everything is not perfect. Everything can be fixed.
St. Paul described us as “jars of clay” in which the light of the Gospel is stored. And he goes on to say:
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.  For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
So it is hardly coincidental that this pottery vase—truly a jar of clay—was somehow restored. Such a tangible miracle can only point to my friend’s total restoration. What form that will take, I cannot say. She may take up her crutches and walk, or she may pass beyond us to a new existence free of the pain and suffering of cancer. But there is no doubt in my mind that God sent us a clear sign that his hand is on her shoulder.
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.
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A day late and a dollar short

I love job lot stores, but I confess, I would have no idea what to do with this stuff. On the other hand, the old farmer in me would sure like to learn.

 (Sorry this is late but it’s harder than you think to post while driving at 74 MPH down the NYS Thruway.)

Friday morning we were scheduled to take the ferry to paint at Monhegan, but we awoke to the sound of heavy rain being driven by a stout wind. My painters were leery of the ferry in that weather, especially knowing that the other side was socked in with rain, and that rain often brings fog. (We have a roof under which to paint on Monhegan, but the views would have been seriously compromised.)
There was still a line at Red’s Eats, even in the rain. People are truly wonderful. (Photo by Corinne Avery)
I’d been working them very hard and they were tired, so we switched gears and decided to poke around galleries in Rockland. We included a stop at the Island Institute’s Archipelagoshop, which showcases a broad and range of art, craft and design made by Maine island residents. After this, we had a quick lunch, packed for us by Lakewatch Manor—and, no, I didn’t remember to take a photo—and took a side trip through Damariscotta, just to enjoy its loveliness.

This poor bridge on the Mohawk seems to get regularly knocked around by flood waters. (Photo by Corinne Avery)
Once again, our timing was exquisite. That volatile, capricious river—the Mohawk—had overflowed the New York State Thruway earlier in the day. By the time we were passing through, it had retreated and was merely nipping at the margins of the road. What could have been a difficult drive was, in fact, easy as blueberry pie. Nine hours later, I was happily home, reading about flooding all over our state and grateful to have arrived unscathed.
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.
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Painting on the St. George Peninsula

I had time to do a rock study today, at Marshall’s Point.
Painting on gorgeous Marshall’s Point. The beautiful weather held out until we were done painting; now a lovely thunderstorm is cooling everything down.
Had my trusty assistant demonstrate a grey scale drawing while I explained. 

J’s painting from Marshall’s Point

C’s painting from Marshall’s Point

S’s painting from Marshall’s Point.

 And if you haven’t signed up for my Rochester classes or Maine workshops, what on earth are you waiting for? August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

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Our first day painting, part 2

Relaxing before dinner.
Lobster bisque, fresh rolls, grilled cauliflower. Whoo hoo!
Flourless chocolate torte. This is where I inadvertently blurted out “unbelievable!”

And if you haven’t signed up for my Rochester classes or Maine workshops, what on earth are you waiting for? August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

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This post is about food. And cooking. Seriously.

Dessert from my last painting workshop, in the Adirondacks. I have every reason to believe the meals at this workshop will be just as good!
Only six more days, and I’ll be in Maine teaching. I set out this morning to do my task-of-the-day, which was to determine which paintings go to Rockland with me and which ones get held in abeyance for Rye later this summer. Sadly—or not, depending on how you look at it—my painting storage is located next to my bedroom. It being the day after a busy weekend, I sat down on my bed for just a moment… and awoke, groggy, two hours later, having missed a hail-and-rain storm that had all Rochester chattering.
I’d also missed a phone call from Lakewatch Manor. I was half asleep when I returned it. It’s a pity, because they wanted to talk to me about food. They wanted my input, actually, which is silly—as if Degas had dialed me up and asked for advice on drawing dancers.
Those who know about my aversion to cooking will be surprised to learn that I’m terribly in tune with Lakewatch’s approach to the culinary arts. Their chefs believe in locally-sourced, organic, healthful produce, eggs and meats prepared with great care—and I believe in EATING exactly that. So it was a pity that I was only half awake for this conversation. I remember hearing phrases like “lobster bisque” and “rhubarb pie” and “hearty hors d’oeuvre,” all of which make me very happy to roll around in my memory.
The problem with mid-coast Maine, sadly, is that there are also too many great places to eat in addition to the Inn. Just a few: there’s S. Fernald’s Country Store in Damariscotta (which the Maine writer Van Reid introduced me to) with its fantastic deli. There’s Owl’s Head General Store, which was celebrating its Best Burger in Maine status when I was in Rockland last November. There are the Irish Egg Rolls at Billy’s Tavern, which I didn’t sample because I was busy having a fantastic burger there, too, but which I intend to sample next time around. They feature corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese fried into a wonton. There’s the Rockland CafĂ©, with its all-you-can-eat seafood.
Of course, there are a gazillion more upmarket restaurants, too, but I never go to these places, since I usually look like The Wreck of the Hesperus* after a long day in the sun painting.
At any rate, that’s why the Lakewatch Manor people allowed for an evening off to go prowling around Rockland. Not only are there the Farnsworth and a slew of other galleries in town, but there are countless opportunities to dine out.
I’m looking forward to it!

*Longfellow based that poem on the wreck of the Favorite, a ship from Wiscasset, which is just down the road a piece from Rockland.

Every day I do one task to prepare for my June workshop in Rockland, ME. Meanwhile, what are you doing to get ready for it? August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information. 
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Thoughts of Maine

Downtown Rockland, not exactly last week. (Rockland Main Street, Inc. website.)
A few people have asked me why I—a person with a decidedly urban personality—like Rockland, ME so much.
If we were in Rockland this evening, we could attend a lecture at the Farnsworth comparing Giotto’s “Life of Christ” and Leonardo’s “Last Supper.” Rockland is a town of 7,297 people, in a county of 39,736—and this is the off-season.  
To compare, I checked the schedule of Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery. (Rochester has a population of 210,565, in a county of 744,344, and that’s the gallery of the well-regarded University of Rochester.) Tonight they are offering… well, nothing. But yesterday we could have done “Yoga at the MAG.”
Lyceums and Chautauqua assemblies were wonderful American 19th century phenomena, concentrated here in the Northeast and in the Midwest. In fact, the Chautauqua movement was founded just south of Buffalo in 1874, at the New York Chautauqua Assembly, which lives to this day as the Chautauqua Institute.
They served up a heady stew of evangelism, populism, education and entertainment. There was an assumption—now largely gone, alas—that the average man hungered for culture, education and entertainment. Today we watch reality TV instead, and most institutions honestly believe that nobody cares to think Big Thoughts anymore.
But back to Maine: the Farnsworth is a fantastic place, well worth a visit. But it’s just one of many fantastic places in this area, which is why I’m so anxious that you join me for one of my workshops. We’ll be painting at lighthouses, beside quiet coves, along rock-strewn beaches. We’ll be going to Monhegan to paint as well.
And if you ever doubt whether this teacher is worth her hire, let me tell you that I know where the bathrooms are.

August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.