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Category: Mid-coast Maine

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Serendipity

Clouds massing over Curtis Island, 12X9, oil on canvas, $395, Camden Falls Gallery.

The Curtis Island overlook is a lovely spot from which one can not only see the Curtis Island light, but can also look back toward Camden Harbor and Mount Battie.

I started painting there in late morning at low tide. The water was a lovely turquoise color one might think was impossible this far north. As I worked, I began to see pink clouds massing to the north. I recognized these clouds; they mass over Lake Ontario at times. When they’re barely distinguishable from the violet haze on the horizon, they tend to presage a thunderstorm.
Waiting out the thunderboomers.
I was just sliding the work into its frame when the first fat drops hit. I can kinda-sorta paint in rain, but I cannot frame in rain, so I moved my tools back to the Eco-Warrior and headed down to the Public Landing. Although the two spots are at most a quarter of a mile apart, it wasn’t raining in downtown Camden. I was able to get the work framed and delivered.
At which point the skies opened up. It is nice to know that I can read the weather in Camden the same way as I read it in Rochester.
Working Boats, 8X6, sold.
I decided to sit in my car and sketch two working boats on the floating docks. When the rain let up to a fine drizzle, I set up to paint. It was very quiet because of the weather; the only people around me were a photographer who wanted to take shots of my palette (it happens) and a couple waiting out the rain in a car behind me.
They’re taking that painting home with them. She loved watching the work progress from a sketch to a finished product. I love that it will always remind them of a day at Camden harbor.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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Up with the chickens

Lazy Jack II, oil on canvasboard, sold.
Yesterday, I got up at 4:15 in order to arrive at Camden Harbor at 6 AM. The harbor was hushed, but even by that hour there were men at work on the fishermen’s dock.
Almost three hours standing on a finger dock can undo the strongest legs, since the docks rock with the slightest movement. I was feeling it by the time the Lazy Jack II moved across the harbor to take on its first passengers of the day. I gratefully moved up to the quay and finished sketching in the boat’s rigging before it left harbor. The rest was just a matter of the setting, and since I’d already sketched the boathouse’s position in place, I didn’t need the Lazy Jack for that.
Camden Crossing, 16X12, oil on canvasboard, $650, contact Camden Falls Gallery.
In the afternoon, I decided to change it up and paint a street scene. I last did this on Labor Day weekend, and the traffic was so heavy that it was difficult to see the lower stories of the buildings. Surely a Tuesday in mid-summer wouldn’t be quiteas bad, right? Wrong. But here’s where painting in all kinds of places comes in handy: all those cars I’ve painted on city streets made it easy for me to block them in even when I couldn’t actually see much of them.
Getting up before the chickens is tough when you don’t have lights or running water. I found myself stumbling around in the gloaming trying to find a place to dig a hole. So this morning I’m taking it easy. I have an errand to run in Waldoboro, I need to fill my car with gas, I want to stop at Hannaford’s and when I’m done doing all those things, I’ll amble over to paint Curtis Island from Bay View Street.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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It’s complicated

Camden schooner fleet, 20X16, oil on canvasboard, $1085, contact Camden Falls Gallery.

Perhaps it’s my advanced age, but I think I’m channeling Grandma Moses this summer. (She was from Greenwich, New York, which is a tiny town near Glens Falls, so we have that Upstate thing in common.) I’m finding myself less interested in modeling with value and brushwork and more and more interested in creating complex patterns of flat color.

Luckily, I got it mostly painted before the boats started to leave on me.
Yesterday I was up at the crack of dawn so I could paint the schooner fleet at Camden. Even by my standards, this painting got awfully complicated, particularly when the fleet started to go out, one by one.
The kayak students went by so many times the instructor asked me if I’d included them in my painting.
But it all worked out just fine—I’d drafted the hulls first, so it was just a question of filling in the rigging. Today, I’m in search of the Lazy Jack II, and since I know it goes out at 9:45 AM, I’m going to try to get to Camden by 5:30. Which is why I’m keeping this brief.
Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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Relationship

Red Truck at the Lumberyard, 10X8, oil on canvasboard, sold.
Saturday, I did Waldoboro’s Paint the Town with a student. It was his first plein air event and his painting sold. “The true gift of the evening was the buyer telling a story about how much it reminded her of a very special time with her mom,” his wife said.
I have sold seven paintings in the last six days. That’s enough to establish some kind of idea about what sells. And what sells is relationship—painting which are universal enough to capture the imagination, but specific enough to evoke a response. A painting can be technically perfect but anodyne and unmoving.
The Three Graces, 10X8, oil on canvasboard, $300, available through Camden Falls Gallery.
Of course, a painter can’t predict what will be meaningful for his audience. All he can do is paint his own feelings and reality.
On Friday, I painted some of the amazing wooden boats that were in Camden Harbor for the Camden feeder of the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta. To paint sailboats from the deck of another boat has been a lifelong dream of mine, so I was ecstatic. And then it got better. Howard Gallagher, owner of Camden Falls Gallery, took me out on his own boat to see the start of the race. Words cannot express how ethereally beautiful and moving it was.
Evening Reverie, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, sold.
All in all, I painted The Three Graces in a state of great happiness. I hope that comes through in my painting, and I hope that translates to something important for its future buyer.
Maine Morning, 8X10, oil on canvasboard, sold.
Camden is high-intensity and highly social. Waldoboro is small, relaxed, and raffish. I went there expecting to know nobody except Loren. So it was funny that I ran into a bunch of painters I know (Ian Bruce, Daniel Corey, Michael Vermette, and Laurie Proctor-Lefebvre) and I met a Facebook friend in real life for the first time (Becky Whight).

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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Reconnoitering Belfast, day two

Super-fast wee little sketch of tugboats in Belfast harbor. It came to an abrupt end (see below).
One of the tasks I love best is driving around scoping out painting sites for my students.
After stopping at the Fireside Inn to make sure everyone’s arrangements are in order for August, I started ferreting around Belfast proper.
Classic Maine promontory, outside Belfast.
If you’re looking for an archetypal mid-coast Maine community, you’ll look in vain. Every town and city has its own character; this is far more true than, say, the little villages strung like pearls along the Erie Canal. Rockland has an old brick Main Street that marches along its waterfront. Rockport curves around its harbor and ancient, defunct lime kiln. Camden is crammed full of luxury yachts, wooden boats, gracious inns (and cars). Lincolnville is a beach town. Northport looks like nothing from Route 1, but veer off on a side road and you might stumble across Bayside, with its lovely Victorian cottages marching down to the sea.
Quiet Maine moment, outside Belfast.
The Belfast area has been settled since around the time of the Revolutionary War, with the usual burnings and occupations of contested properties during our two wars with the British. In the 19th century, it developed into a shipbuilding center, a legacy still visible in the boatyards on the waterfront.
The risk you always take painting on a waterfront is that someone will park their boat right in front of you before you finish. Oh, well.
As wooden ship building faded at the turn of the century, the local economy shifted to seafood and poultry. Unlike many Maine cities, it wasn’t completely dependent on water transport; a spur from the Maine Central railroad was built in 1871. The poultry business is now gone, but the busy little city is now home to galleries and artists.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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Reconnoitering, day one

Pendleton Point Beach, 8X6, oil on canvas, sold.
I have allotted two days to reconnoiter painting sites for my Belfast workshop. Yes, I am familiar with the Belfast area, but finding spots for a group of painters is different from finding spaces for solo painting.
Pup waiting for the Islesboro ferry. So good.
The first step was to take the ferry to Islesboro. I took my student Loren with me—since he lives in Maine anyway—and we drove the length of the island before settling on a public beach. It’s a different feeling from Monhegan: more sheltered because it’s within Penobscot bay, and a gentler landscape. It’s also more accessible, which is what’s important in this workshop, since in part I designed it around the needs of a mobility-impaired student. Monhegan is beautiful, but it’s simply impossible to navigate the ferry and the steep slopes if you’re not fit.
Loren Brown’s oil sketch of Pendleton Point beach.
Islesboro, on the other hand, is a Maine community, rather than a tourist attraction. We ran across a “save our post office” rally; had we had more time, I would have joined in.
Loren and I both painted small sketches to make sure our designated painting site worked. Mine sold from my easel. That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it makes me very happy.
Lighthouse at Islesboro ferry landing.
When I got back to the mainland, I stopped at the Fireside Inn to check on our arrangements. It not only has a salt-water pool, but said pool has a lift for mobility-impaired swimmers to get in and out. As my friend Pamela says, this workshop has “flow.”
I ran across my dream home along the way.
Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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Do you know the Night Soil Man?

My neighbor clearing a fence at 6 AM, before the bugs came out.
In Leisure: the Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper posited that leisure is the foundation of culture and that our bourgeois world has stamped out leisure, Pieper wrote this before the construction of the welfare state. If he’d lived to see it, he might have posited a corollary: the West now concentrates leisure in the least-educated classes, and our movies and music reflect that, with their emphasis on violence and misogyny and peculiar fascination with Kim Kardashian.
That’s a well. And a bucket. You know the drill.
As an intellectual in the German Empire, Pieper presumably had servants to do his grunt work. Being off the grid makes me wonder who in pre-Industrial society had any time to do anything but work. Of course, I am trying to marry my 21st century work with an 18th century existence, which in some ways means I’m doubling my work load. But having said that, I’m able to take certain shortcuts, such as going to the Laundromat instead of pounding my clothes on a rock.
The Eco-Warrior can’t come up the lane any farther than this. Her poor suspension is meant for city streets, not off-roading.
 On the other hand, I also live with 21st century expectations, such as wanting clean linen and hair. And there are no longer systems for living without electricity and city water; for example, we no longer have night-soil men, which means my first job in the morning is to bury the waste from my improvised chamber pot.
Any camper knows the night-soil solution. Best done before one actually wakes up.
At home, I’m a pretty organized person. Here, I’m watching all my systems fall apart, starting with making my bed. It is obvious that integration of domestic work in a non-industrial setting means that if one job doesn’t get done, everyone suffers. Without refrigeration, if you don’t make dinner, you go hungry. If you don’t wash clothes, you’re filthy. There are no deep pantries or walk-in closets here in the woods. Just mosquitoes. The pejorative terms “slattern” or “layabout” have real meaning in a world where work equals survival.
There are definitely consolations. Being alone in Paradise is one of them.
I am not afraid of the dark, nor am I worried about being alone in the woods. I do, however, perceive darkness differently from this vantage point of aloneness. Having not had the foresight to bring a musical instrument, I find myself going to bed early and reading, and then getting up with the birds at about 5 AM.
No electricity and a ladder to my loft means an 8 o’clock bedtime and getting up before 5.
Having spent Saturday morning painting re-enactors, I was able to peek behind the curtain of their performance. On Sunday evening, they went home and took hot showers, and went back to their day jobs. I wonder what they would feel about their existence if their encampments lasted an entire summer, and if there weren’t a lovely, clean restroom at the Visitor Center.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

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Goodbye, Castine, for another year

Water Street morning, 16X12, oil on canvasboard.

Yesterday, Jacq Baldini asked on FB, ““Is this how you really want to be spending your day?” Brilliant question. Darn, I love spending my days like this.

At the end of a plein air festival, what stays with you the most is the conviviality. I got to see Michael Chesley Johnson’s utterly fantastic painting of the Maine Maritime Academy’s training ship. I got to laugh like a hyena with Olena Babakand Renee Lammers while painting on a deck loaned to us by the owner, who rolled off to dinner as soon as we appeared. I painted with Carol Wileyalong Water Street, and with Michael Vermette at the Revolutionary reenactment at the Wilson Museum.

Dappled light (Revolutionary War reenactment), oil on canvasboard, 20X16.

Dyce Head Light, 16X12, oil on canvasboard.

Shot the breeze with Ted Lameyer at about fifty different locales, and painted his kid’s bike dumped along Perkins Street. I had a glass of wine with Bobbi Heathat the artists’ reception. Mary Byromplotted with me about participating in Saranac Lake, but I only had a brief moment to chat with Laurie Lefebvre while painting—she can set up, paint, and tear down in her inimitable furious style in the time it takes me to choose a brush.

Lunch break, 9X12, oil on canvasboard.

A happy band of brothers are we.
A very unique feature about Castine Plein Air is that they partner artists with local residents. My “host family” are gracious and avid supporters of the community, not to mention phenomenal chefs. When you’re in the field painting from 7 AM until 9 PM, having a real home to come home to is wonderful.

The Path Below the Lighthouse, 6X8, oil on canvasboard
If there was a TripAdvisor for plein air festivals, I’d rate this one tops.
Next week, I’m painting both at Camden Falls Gallery and Waldoboro’s Paint the Town. But today I am going to rest, do my laundry, and peace out.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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How do I love you, Maine? Let me count the ways.

Sunset at Castine, oil on canvas, 12X9, $395, available through Castine Plein Air.
Maine—where people offer you a spot on their deck to paint the sunset and add, “There’s a bathroom on the lower level and cold drinks inside, anything you need.” And then simply leave and let you paint. Or see you painting outside their house and come over and offer you a cool drink and a bathroom. Or coffee. Or anything you might need.
I really did finish it, but then I forgot to photograph it. The Dyce Head Light is too lovely to not paint, even if you suffer from a surfeit of lighthouses.
Maine—where even in the middle of summer, your window fogs up when you start your car after dusk, a gentle 64° breeze sweeps away the heat of the day as you drive slowly ‘home’ down a dirt road with the windows open. And when you get there, your friends have made you a delicious home-cooked meal.
Maine—where the clouds are ever-changing and always rolling along, pushed by the clash of ocean breezes and the prevailing westerlies.
Boathouse and dead tree. I painted this in a deluge and didn’t like it at the time, but I’ve reconsidered. It has a certain off-hand charm. I was listening to Dorothy Sayers’ Whose Body on my phone while I painted this. Perhaps it is influenced a little by Lord Peter Wimsey.
Maine—where there really are still village greens, Civil War memorials, streets lined with white-clapboard covered houses, and one-room schoolhouses.
A lovely scene below the lighthouse. If I live to be 99, I will never completely paint Castine.
Yesterday I painted four paintings. I was so intent on my work that I neglected to photograph one entirely, and photographed the other half finished. That is an indication of how intense Castine Plein Air is, but it’s also very engaging. I talked to people from all over the United States, including new Facebook friends from Central New York who are vacationing near Acadia and drove over for the day to see this event. It was great meeting you, Daphne and Bruce.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.
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Street scene from Damariscotta

Main Street in Damariscotta, oil on canvas, 8X10
Yesterday I had less than two hours to paint with my student Loren in Damariscotta before I took off for Castine. I love the gaps on the water side of Maine Main Streets, with harbors glimpsed behind them. The buildings themselves are venerable and full of character, and the gaps speak of transition to a sparkling, clearer, brighter future.
Two quiet hours with a friend was in itself a nice transition from my concerns back in Rochester into the busy brushwork we will all be doing at Castine Plein Air for the next three days. If you’re ever in the mid-coast region, come by and see this lovely small city. Plan to take time for a self-guided walking tour of historic sites; Castine has an amazingly rich and varied history.
Me, painting. That was fun!
Castine is off the beaten track, so the tourists trundling up US 1 never see it. It has almost an otherworldly quality because of this. This morning at 7:30 AM, we painters will stand in the village green and have our painting boards stamped. It remains to be seen how we capture that quality.
If you come to Castine this weekend, stop by the Castine Historical Society and pick up a copy of their new self-guided  walking tour map. I immediately marked mine up with potential painting sites. (Photo credit, Castine Historical Society.)
Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.