plein air painting Archives | Page 10 of 11

July 20, 2016

Far more fun than the convention

Come for the art show, stay for the full moon and balmy sea breezes.

Today is wrap-up day at Ocean Park’s Art in the Park. The wet paint show and saleis tonight from 5 to 7 PM. If you’re in Portland or points south, it’s a short drive to 14 Temple Ave, Ocean Park.

It’s a Perfect 10 day. You’ll see fine artwork in a beautiful historic beach town and you can stroll downtown for an ice cream cone afterward. Above all, nobody will be talking about the Republican National Convention.

Tour-de-force painting of the shuffleboard sign by Russel Whitten. I'm sure he finished this as perfectly as he started it.

Tour-de-force painting of the shuffleboard sign by Russel Whitten, in progress.

For the artists, the last day of an event means finishing work, taking photos, framing and packing. If there’s time, we might even paint one more piece just for fun. For watercolorists and pastel artists, the added work is even more considerable, since they must frame under glass and mount their work on acid-free paper.

Our workbenches are any flat surfaces we can appropriate for a few minutes. I have the luxury of a picnic table and fine weather today, but there have been many times I’ve framed on the back deck of my little Prius.

I started my morning yesterday by finishing my ice cream parlor painting from Monday. Anthony Watkins and Ed Buonvecchio chose the same subject, so we held an impromptu salon under the maples at the corner of Temple and Grand. All three of us like talking about painting almost as much as we like doing it.

“Goosefare sunset,” 10X8, Carol L. Douglas

An aspiring painter named Heidy sat down to watch me paint. When I realized she had her kit in her car, I suggested she paint with us in the afternoon. “You’ve chosen well, or badly,” I told her. “You’re surrounded by painting teachers.” It wasRussel Whitten who broke first and gave her an impromptu watercolor lesson.

Larry, Curly and Moe lost on a sand dune. (That’s really Anthony Watkins, Russ Whitten and Ed Buonvecchio.)

In addition to painting, Ed and I hawk Plein Air Painters of Maine to other painters. This totally-free association is a great resource. For most people, it’s important to have support and company in what is essentially a solitary pursuit.

“Curve on Goosefare Brook,” 8X6, Carol L. Douglas.

It’s not that common for event painters to move in a pack like we’ve been doing. I’ve really enjoyed it. For all our larking about, the work we’re turning out is of consistent high caliber. We’re all relaxed and having fun, and it shows in our work.

July 19, 2016

What could possibly go wrong?

"Ocean Park Ice Cream Parlor," 12X16. I'm heading down to finish it this morning.

“Ocean Park Ice Cream Fountain,” 12X16. I’m heading down to finish it this morning.

Early yesterday I got a call from Ed Buonvecchio, who is painting at Ocean Park’sArt in the Park with me. He planned to paint along the railroad tracks on the road into town. I told him it sounded, frankly, awful. I’d find my own darn painting spot.

Ambling along Temple Avenue, I ran into Frank Gwalthney, who was walking purposefully up the street. “Could you let me into Jakeman Hall to sharpen my pencils?” I asked.

“I need to run down to the tracks first,” he responded. “I got a call that Ed’s car is too close to the tracks. He needs to move it before it gets hit by a train.”

“Rising Surf,” 8X6, painted from the water side.

Happily, I can report that neither Ed nor his car was harmed, although he was close enough to the tracks that he seemed a little, well, stunned the rest of the day. I was so wrong about the subject. Ed’s painting is one of those rare things that make me think, “I wish I’d painted that.”

Art in the Park has been redesigned to be an invitational event with just five painters. This means we get to know our fellows much better than at the typical event, where 30 painters swarm across the landscape. I took my lunch break under a spreading maple with Christine Mathieu. Our paths have crossed over the years, but this was the first time we’ve ever really had a chance to talk.

The storm which rolled across Maine yesterday rumbled and threatened but eventually skipped over us. It arrived conveniently a few moments before our opening reception at Porter Hall. I enjoyed chatting with a woman who regularly reads my blog at home in St. Martins in the Caribbean.

Painting in the surf. I kept moving the easel toward shore whenever I felt it start slipping.

In the evening I took a few minutes to jump into the sea. “Why not?” I asked myself as I pondered how gorgeous the surf always looks from the water side. The tide was rising, so I had to move my easel every few minutes, but painting from the water worked just fine—until I tried to get the salt-water out of my tripod. It’s carbon fiber, so it isn’t going to rust, but I’m worried about the fittings.

Russ Whitten, Ed Buonvecchio and I painting nocturnes at the end of the day.

Russ Whitten, Ed Buonvecchio and I painted nocturnes at the end of the day.

We ended the day at the Temple, where Ed, Russel Whitten and I set up perilously late to paint a nocturne. (It helps if you do the drawing when it’s still light.) This was a little hard on Russ, whose watercolor paper wasn’t drying in the night air, and who has to “dance backwards,” leaving openings for the light areas instead of painting them in at the end.

The Temple, unfinished. I’ll finish it tonight.

The three of us grumbled and laughed about the absurdity of what we were doing but in the end we all turned out respectable attempts. Fourteen hours after we’d started working we folded up for the night. Today we do it again. It’s a fascinating life, although sometimes it’s grueling as well.

July 15, 2016

Thrown out of better places

Very unfinished sketch across to Cold Storage Road in Port Clyde. Yes, the light was pretty dismal.

The Maine waterfront works for a living, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so interesting. The lobster traps and buoys stacked on piers, and the dories and dinghies tied to floating docks are the tools of someone’s trade. In general, I’ve found that I get along fine with working fishermen as long as I don’t trespass on their property.

PAPME’s northern chapter met at Port Clyde yesterday. This place is a special case. Parking is restricted because property owners understandably don’t want the Monhegan Boat Line’s customers leaving their cars parked all over the village.

This would probably have been my subject off Horse Point Road.

Marshall Point Lighthouse has visitor parking, but it’s too far from the village to paint the harbor. I arranged to meet Bobbi Heath and Renee Lammers on the co-op’s road instead, where we planned to paint on the verge.

Renee knew another site, off Horse Point Road, which had a fine view of Raspberry Island. This spot was just magical. While Renee photographed a dory, Bobbi and I looked at an outstanding fleet of wooden lobster boats. We were about to start painting when a lobsterman came ashore. “Ladies,” he started, and the next minute we were leaving.

There’s a beautiful fleet of wooden lobster boats out of Port Clyde.

We drove back to our first site and our first ideas. Cars were parked on this road because there is a community playground at the corner. I figured we were safe enough in joining them.

By this time it was raining fitfully. The wind was too high for umbrellas, so we just took cover during the wet times. Bobbi took a compass reading for me and I calculated where the light would be if it ever came up. I guessed wrong. When the sky briefly cleared in the afternoon, I realized I had built the light patterns backwards.

Yes, there were interruptions. (Photo courtesy of Bobbi Heath)

Meanwhile, our friends had been driven off Marshall Point by the wind, and a few of them joined us. I wasn’t paying that much attention until the property owner drove by. “How would you like it if I came to your house and painted all over your front lawn?” he asked. His driveway was completely parked in.

No summer squash to be had anywhere.

Well, in fact, I wouldn’t mind, but I did see his point. He couldn’t use his own driveway. Painters are generally polite people, so my pals quickly folded up and left.

Neither Bobbi nor I were in fact on his lawn, so I felt fine staying where I was. However, any magic there had been had faded in the ringing of his words. I took a few more swipes at my unfinished canvas. Then I too folded my tent and headed home.

July 13, 2016

Road with a view

A million quiet moments of beauty are in every vista. (Photo by Sandy Quang)

One of the tasks of a plein air painting teacher is to locate painting sites. Not only must they have good subject matter, but they must be safe, have sufficient parking, and give access to a bathroom or a quiet stretch of shrubbery. They should be easily accessible to people coming from a wide range of places. Some of my favorites are on the St. George Peninsula.

After being surprised by the overgrowth at Glen Cove a few weeks ago, I decided I should reconnoiter more. Even that doesn’t always work. When I got to Spruce Head yesterday, a bucket truck was parked where I’d hoped to teach, doing something to the power lines. No matter. A little farther along there was ample parking and a different view.

Yesterday’s view from the causeway at Spruce Head. (Photo by Sandy Quang)

Back in the day, studios at the Art Students League were jammed full of students, to a degree non-New Yorkers would never accept. Needless to say, not everyone had a “good view.” We were expected to make the most of what we had. It was very good training in finding the sublime anywhere.

In general, if you can’t find something to paint, it’s your mind that need adjusting, not the view. That’s not to say that it’s not easier in Maine, where every twist in the road brings something new. But there are many levels of beauty in every scene.

Yesterday, my students all painted variations of a dinghy at rest on the mud flats. It was an easily accessible composition, and it’s what I would have painted. But sometimes when you’re sitting quietly in nature, other things begin to vie with your attention—a rock formation, the shadows formed by a dock. For me, that usually happens about halfway through a painting, when I realize I’m actually more interested in something completely different from where I started.

A heron flew in to fish in the shallows. He spent the whole morning with us.

I currently have three students painting in water-based media. For the teacher, having both oils and watercolor in your class requires turning your brain inside out repeatedly, for the basic way you see and work—light vs. dark—is reversed between them.

Sheryl Cassibry and I did this little watercolor sketch together, as a way of exploring how the medium works.

Sheryl Cassibry and I did a joint watercolor painting in my sketchbook last week. We took turns painting on it. It was a fun way to explore how the medium works.

My Southern readers will laugh, but even out on Spruce Head, it was just too hot to paint. My car thermometer read 79° F. as I drove back to Rockport. I’m not acclimated to any kind of heat, and standing out in the blazing sun with a strong on-shore breeze, I got a terrific headache.

It wasn’t just me, either. Renee Lammers told me later that it was too hot to paint in Stonington, too. “I think I need a cooling vest,” she said. Maybe she’ll invent one.

July 12, 2016

Looking backward

“Delaware Water Gap,” 12X9, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas

I used to commute from Rochester to New York City once a week, a round trip of about 700 miles. The fastest route between the two ends of New York is actually through Pennsylvania and New Jersey. This takes you through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

A water gap is where an old river cuts through a mountain ridge. My college-age kid tells me that about 400 million years ago, a microcontinent called Avalonia collided with proto-North America. This heated and cracked the quartz in the Shawangunk Ridge, which allowed the Delaware River to slowly cut its path through the mountains as they rose. Or something like that.

“Lower Falls at Letchworth,” 18×24, oil on canvas. It took me a whole summer to finish two paintings but at the end I understood how I wanted to simplify the rock forms.

The whole idea sounds about as plausible to me as fairies, but there is no question that the Delaware Water Gap is a beautiful jumble of massive rock folds and towering greenery through which the river glides in cool, reserved majesty.

I frequently stopped there to rest; occasionally I painted. One of those paintings, above, is on my website, but I haven’t thought about it for years. Sunday I received an email inquiry about it. Yesterday a woman from Minnesota purchased it. I don’t know her attachment to the Water Gap, but I hope she has the joy of owning it that I had in painting it.

“Upper Falls at Letchworth,” 18×24, oil on canvas.

We all end up with good work in our storerooms that we’ve moved beyond. I think particularly of a pair of paintings of Letchworth Gorge that I spent nearly a whole summer on. I consider them among my best landscape paintings. It was in painting them that I learned how to abstract the natural form. However, they are very different from my current work and thus difficult to show.

“Buffalo Grain Elevators,” oil and cold wax medium. This was the culmination of a period of tinkering with surfaces to imply the decay of cities like Buffalo.

“Buffalo Grain Elevators,” oil and cold wax medium. This was the culmination of a period of tinkering with surfaces to describe the age of cities like Buffalo.

There is no expiration date on good work. But we frequently set it aside because its problems no longer interest us. That is a mistake, I think. Old work deserves to be revisited.

Sometimes its strength surprises me. At other times, it’s actually more consistent with my current work than I remembered. But beyond that, what no longer occupies your thoughts on a technical level may still bring great joy to others.

May 13, 2015

Last class in Rochester

Nina Koski and Cece Tassone painting in my garden. (Yes, I’m partial to the jungle aesthetic.)

There is no lovelier place than the Genesee Valley. From the six spectacular falls in the Genesee River to the Lake Ontario shore to the old neighborhoods of Rochester to our parks and arboretums, our area shines in May. So where did I decide to teach my last class? In my front garden, of course, coming full circle around to the place where I first declared myself a teacher.

Me, Nina and Carol Thiel painting in my front garden.

When my friend Catherine suggested that I hold painting classes, I was skeptical. I’m not credentialed in education, and my teaching experience was limited to Sunday school. But I rapidly realized that I could, in fact, teach.

What teaching teaches you is that your method can be divided and described as a process. I really didn’t realize how much I knew about painting until I taught it, year in and year out.

Brad Van Auken and Aaron Boucher painting in my front garden while Carol takes a break in the shade.

Still, a lot of people can paint well and even describe their process. However, not all of them care whether others reach their full potential. That’s the basic difference between someone who should be teaching and someone who shouldn’t.

Victoria Brzustowicz and Teressa Ramos listening to my blather.

My husband plays with an Eastman-trained musician, Pastor Debra Parris. He once said to me, “she’s got all the talent in the world, but she spends so much time encouraging others to make music.” That’s a fine legacy and something to aspire to.

The solar queen attended and waved regally at us.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in August 2015. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

May 11, 2015

Rescuing failure

Ellwanger-Berry Garden, 12X16, oils. This almost got scraped out; it’s ended up being one of my favorite paintings.

There’s a view outside my house that has defeated me. It is a sycamore set against a curving street. It’s elegant, architectural, and should be easy enough to paint. But I’ve yet to realize it in a plein air painting.

If you fail at something, hooray! That means you’re pushing past what you know. You’re on your way to your next discovery. You’re breaking limits. Each failed painting, ironically, puts you one step closer to success.

Safe Harbor, 16X20, oil on canvasboard. Sometimes you have to paint something repeatedly before you get it right.

It’s a good thing that failure is such a positive thing, since I do it so frequently.

Occasionally, when a painting is past salvaging, I scrape it out and accept my failure. But if it’s not completely terrible, I save it, set it aside, and go back and look at it later. Sometimes I have found that some good paintings completely eluded me at the time I did them. But regardless, when it starts to go wrong, I’ve learned to stop throwing more time, energy, or paint at it.

Failure sucks, but the only way to defeat it is to try again. That doesn’t mean going back to that sycamore and beating it up with a pencil; it means painting again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day after that.

Moorings, 14X18, oil on canvasboard. I didn’t like this when I painted it. Marilyn Feinberg, who was with me, liked it. I’ve come to agree with her. Another set of eyes is always helpful.

March 12, 2015

It’s tax season

Plein air painters drive around until they find what they want to paint, and then they stop and paint it. That makes absolutely no sense to auditors. This is my dearly-missed painting pal, Marilyn Feinberg, in Naples, New York.

I get a “how to succeed in art” newsletter. A few weeks ago, they sent a sample schedule out. It included time for making and marketing, but no allowances were made for recordkeeping.

I love the time I spend zooming around from plein air event to plein air event in my elderly Prius. However, summer generates not only revenue but receipts. Eventually they all have to be entered in my books.

A scene on the same road, above. They don’t magically happen; you have to look for them.

Some people do that as they go; I prefer to collect a stack of papers and curse at them in March. Not only do I do my income tax and sales tax returns, I also look at our investments and determine if they need to be redeployed. At the end of this, I clear out and reorganize my files, which is why Easter is the one meal we’re able to have at our dining room table.

There was a time when we had a single, standard currency. Although our financial system is pegged to the dollar, we now use credit cards and EFTs more than we use cash. That’s convenient, but it means that we must check credit card statements, Paypal, Amazon, bank statements, EZ pass records, and cash receipts.

A recent tax ruling involving artist Susan Crile validates the idea that artists regularly lose money in the pursuit of future success. This is only fair, since the IRS eagerly taxes those of us whose ship has come in. But before you can deduct your expenses, you must keep track of them. It’s persnickety business.

And you don’t get beautiful paintings without generating a rather ugly stack of receipts.

“I don’t have a destination,” I once told an IRS auditor. “I drive until I find a view to paint, and then I stop and I paint it.” She couldn’t find a reason to disallow that on the spot, but she warned me that my future mileage logs better include destinations. Now my GPS unit logs my mileage—as longitude and latitude points, which are converted into addresses with software my husband wrote for me.

But most people don’t have a software guru at home, nor should making a living be such an exercise in appeasing government inspectors. I spend about a hundred hours a year on record-keeping to satisfy the IRS. How does that advance art, or advance the American economy?

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

February 25, 2015

This blog is on a two-hour snow delay

Shadow on Frankfort Barren, 1982, Neil Welliver

Last week was historically the coldest week of the year. That should be a relief, but we’ve got at least another week of subzero weather on the forecast. The whole northeast has struggled with snow and extreme cold this winter. Anyone who watches the weather recognizes this as a reprise of last year, and wonders if we’re entering an extreme cold cycle.

Unyarded Deer, Neil Welliver.

Nevertheless I generally like winter, and I particularly like the paintings of Neil Welliver.

Welliver studied at Yale with abstract painters Burgoyne Diller and Josef Albers. He went on to teach at Cooper Union, Yale, and Penn.

Cold Claudia, 1969, Neil Welliver. Too often the figures in his mid-period paintings look like empty spaces around which the landscape crowds. To me that’s an unconscious attempt to get past the academic idea that the figure is the highest representation of painting.

While teaching at Yale, Welliver dropped abstraction in favor of realistic landscape painting. In the early 1960s he began vacationing in Maine, where he began integrating figure in the landscape. In 1970 he moved permanently to Lincolnville, ME. Shortly thereafter, his mature style was born.

Welliver based his huge finished works on plein air sketches done in the wood and coastline near his home.

Study for Allagash Ice Flow, 1997, Neil Welliver.

“Painting outside in winter is not a macho thing to do. It’s more difficult than that. To paint outside in the winter is painful. It hurts your hands, it hurts your feet, it hurts your ears. Painting is difficult. The paint is rigid, it’s stiff, it doesn’t move easily. But sometimes there are things you want and that’s the only way you get them,” he said.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

January 30, 2015

Heading north in slow stages

Frozen paints…

…lead to a frozen sketch.

A week ago today, I drove up the Maine coast in slow stages. Maine is beautiful in winter, but it’s not the same kind of beauty as in August. Mid-coast Maine and Rochester have about the same winter temperatures. (As here, it gets colder the farther away from open water you go.) But there’s far more winter sun in Maine, and it creates the illusion of warmth.

Belfast tugs, last summer. That’s my student Brad Van Auken’s painting start.

I stopped in Belfast, ME for groceries, a gallery call, and a few moments of sketching at the harbor. Belfast often has tugs under repair in its boatyard, and it is a pretty place even in January. I pulled out my watercolor sketch kit and started a fast sketch of the pretty red boathouse. When my paints froze in the pan, it was a sign that I should move on.

North of Ellsworth, US 1 becomes a much quieter, more contemplative road.

After Ellsworth, ME (the turn-off to Bar Harbor), US 1 becomes a much quieter road, especially in winter. My goal was to arrive in Winter Harbor by dusk. After a quick trip out to Schoodic Point to catch the winter sun setting over the ocean, I settled in for the night.

Sun setting over Schoodic Point.

Not wanting to head into Winter Harbor for a pub meal, I was forced to cook myself dinner. I reminded myself that wine goes with everything, and soldiered on.

Wine goes with everything.