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Category: Penobscot East Resource Center

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New name, same vision

Penobscot East Resource Center has changed its name to Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries. It’s still the same great group.

High Tide, Scott Island, by Carol L. Douglas
Artists are besieged by requests for auction items. I’ve written before about how you should contribute if you support the organization’s goals, but not because you think it will give you a tax deduction.
One organization I endorse is the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries (MCCF) in Stonington. This non-profit is dedicated to maintaining sustainable fishing off the Maine coast forever. They think this should be a three-pronged approach:
  • ·         Preserve our diverse ecosystem;
  • ·         Assure continued access to fishing;
  • ·         Maintain profitability for community-scale fishermen.

Much of the charm of the Maine coast comes from the fishing industry: the lobster fleets bobbing merrily in small harbors and coves, colorful traps stacked on wharves or fashioned into Christmas trees in the holiday season.
Stonington Green, by Bobbi Heath
The tourist industry is closely entwined with the fishing industry. So is the landscape-painting industry. That’s especially true for people like me, who paint a lot of boats.
For that reason, I’ve contributed painted buoys to MCCF’s auction for several years. My personal favorites were the Mermaid Madonna and the Lobster That Ate New York, although the lupineand fishones probably netted the group more money.
Stonington Public Landing, by Carol L. Douglas (courtesy the Kelpie Gallery)
Last year, Bobbi Heathjoined me in contributing a buoy. This year, we’re both contributing again. Happily, the organization has opened the auction up to include conventional paintings. I found painting on a cylinder to be devilishly difficult.
On Friday, I delivered a painting done off Stonington, entitled High Tide, Scott Island. I did this off the deck of American Eagle last summer. It was an idyllic day, and I hope my happiness at being on the water is apparent.
I also delivered Bobbi’s painting, Stonington Green. Administrative Director Bobbi Billings recognized the house as belonging to someone she knew. That kind of validation always tickles me, and I wish Bobbi Heath had been there to hear it.
The auction will be held on August 7 at the Opera House in Stonington. For more information, contact MCCF here.
Stonington waterfront (unfinished) by Carol L. Douglas
Friday was one of those days where every curve in the road elicits a gasp of delight at the wonder and glory of spring. Stonington is absurdly beautiful, but it’s also two hours from my studio. I’m lucky to get up there once or twice a summer. That has a bad effect on painting, because the pressure to choose the ‘right’ scene is immense.
I set up on the deck of MCCF’s office. It provides an iconic view of Stonington, with its repeating mansard roofs. I gave myself a strict deadline, after which I would have to be on my way. There’s a lot of drawing in the painting, and I have to adjust a roofline, but I very nearly made it.
Friday’s rainbow off Lincolnville.
I finished in complete solitude in the limpid light of late afternoon, the tide having filled the basin that lies before the town. In the distance, I could hear a foghorn bleating. The Maine coast produces erratic weather and distorts sound, so I had no idea where it might be raining. I packed my gear and reluctantly headed west. I wasn’t much past Orland when this Spring’s ever-present rain hit my windshield in earnest.
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The large, angry crustacean is on his way to Maine.

The finished buoy. You can buy this!

When I blogged last month asking for suggestions about what to paint on my 2014 buoy for Penobscot East Resource Center’s fifth annual lobster buoy auction, I received four texts in rapid succession:

“Mom! Paint a giant lobster battling the Kraken!”
“Mom! Paint an enormous lobster destroying a city!”
“Mom, paint a big lobster eating New York!”
“Mom, paint a lobster battling an army in the style of the Bayeux Tapestry.”

The major change I made was adding Black Hawk helicopters.
When your four most severe critics all come up with the same idea at the same time, you have to run with it. And it fit with the idea that I had been turning over but wasn’t sure how to paint.

Signed and titled by the artist, as always.
It’s no secret to Mainers that lobster prices steadily tanked from 2005 to 2014. At the same time, restaurant prices for lobster remained high. That’s a fascinating disconnect—one I think is beautifully explained here—but the bottom line is that lobster costs more in New York because consumers haven’t a clue what’s happening in local commodity markets.  That means there’s an artificially big profit being made, and it isn’t happening on the docks of coastal Maine.

When you live in a Magical Duchy, you don’t need to go to the Post Office. You just put your package on the back of the truck and it miraculously gets mailed.
A situation that needs fixing but seems to be out of the range of mortal ken calls for a superhero. Who better than a large, angry crustacean from the Atlantic depths?

I like painting from life, but that’s a little difficult in this case.
Last week I was reading about the influence of 19thcentury Japanisme on western art and thinking I was absolutely free of it. But I have to admit that I owe a nod to Godzilla, and maybe to King Kong as well. (After all, the Empire State Building is somewhere in that mish-mosh.) The Black Hawk helicopters, however, are just modern America.

Looking around for pictures of lobsters last month, I came across this rhyton from the Met, c. 460 BC, in the shape of a lobster claw. Good to know lobsters are an eternal verity.
The auction will be held Tuesday, August 5th, 2014 at the Fishermen’s Friend Restaurant in Stonington, ME. If you’re in Stonington this summer, you can stop by and see all the buoys and vote for your favorite (as long as it’s mine). You’ll also be able to bid on your favorites online. Watch this space for more information.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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Oh, buoy!

Day #2. Will finish today. I love this fundraiser for Penobscot Bay Resource Center almost more than anything else I do!
If I were gonna make a habit of painting on buoys, I’d find some way to hold them steady. I painted on this one for five and a half hours yesterday, and it wasn’t my painting hand that was tired, it was the hand clutching the buoy.
I haven’t got a table per se in my studio, so I sat in the dinette in my kitchen to work on this. That had the advantage of being more comfortable, but it had the disadvantage of exposing me to my peanut gallery.
How can you tell the lobster is attacking New York? Because that’s the Brooklyn Bridge!
“Do you really think a lobster could stand on his tail like that to attack the city of New York?” asked my son.
“A lobster could theoretically grow that big,” noted my daughter, who is a biomedical engineering major and presumably au courant on matters of biology. “Unlike humans, who have a finite number of cell replications, they can keep growing forever.”
Even my engineer husband and daughters haven’t found a way to make working on this buoy comfortable. Any suggestions?
“However,” she added, “I think the lobster should be lighted from the bottom. He is, after all, in the City.”
I hate when my kids are right. But I also plan to finish this painting today, so they can have it in Stonington, ME, by May 15.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Help! I need ideas.

The buoy itself, awaiting ideas. Any suggestions, friends?
Last year, when I got a buoy in the mail, one of my kids asked, “Who sent us an oversized dreidel?” This year, we’ve moved on, so the question is, “What should Mom paint on that oversized dreidel?”
Once again, I’ll be participating in Penobscot East Resource Center’s  Annual Lobster Buoy and Reverse Auction. There are a lot of very witty buoys submitted, some of which you can see here.
Last year’s buoy.
Penobscot East Resource Center works to rebuild a small-scale diversified fishery where fishermen and their communities are a part of the governance of fishing. They serve 50 communities from Penobscot Bay to the Canadian border. This is the most fishery-dependent stretch of the East Coast.
If you’ve followed the news, you know that lobster wholesale prices have been in freefall—they’re somewhere near a twenty-year low. This is devastating for lobstering communities. (The New Yorker did an interesting piece on why that hasn’t translated into lower restaurant prices, which you can read here.)
So they’re a good organization, and I want to support them by painting a good buoy, one that will make patrons smile and pull out their wallets.

Gnomes are known to indulge themselves at times. I’m leaning toward painting them, but am open to suggestions.
Last year I painted a mermaid on a rock. I discovered in the process that the tapered shape of a buoy makes a wraparound painting devilishly difficult. Still, I want to paint something realistic again this year (ahem). I’ve bounced around from gnomes to fairies to gluttonous gnomes feasting on lobsters while being serenaded by fairies.
Any suggestions, friends?


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Belfast, Maine in August, 2014 or in Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Buoy auction!

As I’ve mentioned here before, I recently painted a Merdonna and Child for an auction to raise money for Penobscot East Resource Center. You can see my buoy here. 
When you’re done leafing through these, you can see all the buoys here. (And I hope you will consider bidding on them to raise money for this organization, which you can also do by emailing the director.) There are more than 60 buoys altogether, and they are very fine work indeed. These were selected under no greater organizing principle than that I liked them. But you may find others you like much better. If so, would you let me know? 

Paula Dougherty’s “Seabirds”

This is colored pencil. As absurd a notion as doing trompe-l’Ɠil using fist-sized pastels. And yet it works. The artist says this is a combination of “realistic and mythical seabirds.”  She’s from Brooklin. 

Julie Reed’s “Dressed to Krill”

“This little buoy has been hanging out underwater and has come up dripping with a net covered in krill! Who knew zooplankton could be so beautiful?” says Julie Reed, who–when she’s not beading–is a nurse and volunteer EMT in Deer Isle. 

Jean C. Burdo’s “Seaside Village”

I don’t usually respond to folk art, but this is awfully well-executed, whimsical, and curiously true to what a Maine seaside village looks like. 

Mary Ellen Kelleher’s “Zinnias & Bugs”

“Oh, buoy! Is there anything better than a day in the garden,” it asks.  Great flowers and a luscious blue sky…. and the painter is from Rockland. 

Audrey Yankielun’s “Number 2”

How did Yakielun look at a buoy and see a pencil? Was she a bean-counter in Westfield, NJ before (as she states on her website) “walking away from my corporate position in 2007?” No idea, but she made me say, “I wish I’d thought of that!”

Jill Hoy’s “Dancing Tree”

No mystery to this: it looks like a Tom Thompson or Group of Seven tree, so of course I like it. Hoy operates a gallery in Stonington, and I think I’d like to wander up to see it on one of these trips. 

Persis Clayton Weirs’ “Torrey Pond”

Having just painted a buoy myself, I’m in awe of the control needed to do this work on this surface. Torrey writes, “A mile walk back into the woods from our house leads to a beautiful wild pond. Cat tails and lily pads line the shores and spread into the shallows. Torrey Pond is a haven to eagles, water birds, beavers, snapping turtles and an occasional visiting moose visiting from the mainland.” 

Rebekah Raye’s “The Owl & Pussy Cat Set Sail”

Well, why not? (I think I actually saw their beautiful pea-green boat in Camden harbor last month.)

Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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Goodbye, Mermaid Madonna!

Mermaid Madonna and her little Mer-baby.
The Mermaid Madonna left my studio today, bound for Stonington, ME, where she will be sold in the Penobscot East Resource Center’s 4th Annual Lobster Buoy and Reverse Auction.
Penobscot East Resource Center works to rebuild a small-scale diversified fishery where fishermen and their communities are a part of the governance of fishing. They serve 50 communities from Penobscot Bay to the Canadian border. This is the most fishery-dependent stretch of the East Coast.
I seldom get attached to my work, but the Mermaid Madonna resonated with me. The Mermaid herself is based on Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann’s Havfrue(1873), and her tiny son is just a confection from my mind. The Mermaid Madonna’s tail wraps all the way around the buoy to touch her baby’s tail. A lone lobsterman works in the distance.
Front view of the Mermaid Madonna.
The baby’s hair, I decided, needed to be the seaweed equivalent of a towhead, so I painted it a brilliant green, low on the back of his head where baby hair first comes in. And his little Mer-bottom was great fun to paint.
Side view showing the Mermaid Madonna’s tail reaching around to touch her baby.
When I was first asked to paint this buoy, I was completely stumped for a subject. A seascape on a buoy would be predictable coming from me, I thought. I pondered the primordial Greek sea goddess Thalassa (Î˜ÎŹÎ»Î±ÏƒÏƒÎ±) as a subject.  From there, mermaids were the next logical step.
A lone lobsterman working in the distance on the back of the buoy.
“So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.And God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:21)
A few years ago, we had a young woman living with us named Abi; she was obsessed with drawing mermaids. I tried to get her to diversify, but now I owe her an apology; mermaids can easily become an obsession.
Packing her was almost as difficult as painting her, but I figured that mounting the buoy on two pieces of plywood would keep it stable in its box… which was marked in huge letters, “Fragile!” With all the rain and dampness we’ve had, the buoy still wasn’t completely dry.
I’m confident my Mermaid Madonna will go to a good home, but if you want to bid on her, contact Penobscot East Resource Center here and ask them how you can place a remote bid in the auction.
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.
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Why do mermaids wear shell bras?

I can do anything when I have bungee cords, including painting on all sides of a buoy. (Yesterday’s objections retracted.)

It was 54°, rumbling, and pouring rain here this morning. Nobody wanted to be outside; my suggestions to walk were summarily rejected by my son, my husband, and my personal coach, in that order.  So I went upstairs and spent some time with the mermaid I’m painting for the Penobscot East Resource Center. “You’re complaining?” she whispered in my ear. “That’s typical weather for us mermaids. Why do you think we wear these silly shell bras?”
Back of the buoy, a lobster boat.
As soon as she dries, she is going in a box and traveling back to Maine.

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.