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Category: plein air

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Seven Days of the Group of Seven—JEH MacDonald (1873-1932)

I’m off to Maine and Rye! I’m leaving some of my favorite landscape paintings for you—works by Canada’s mighty Group of Seven painters. I love them because they combine the freshness of impressionism with a love for the northern landscape.

The Tangled Garden, 1916, JEH MacDonald 
At the age of 14, JEH MacDonald moved with his family from England to Hamilton, Ontario. He studied commercial art in Toronto, where he was active in Toronto Art Student League. In November 1911, MacDonald exhibited sketches at the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, which brought him to the attention of Lawren Harris. In January 1913, an exhibit in Buffalo of Scandinavian Impressionist paintings gave him a sense of how Impressionism could be suited to the wild northern landscape.
At first glance, The Tangled Garden appears to be a fairly conventional essay into impressionism, owing a lot to Van Gogh. But MacDonald’s background as a graphic designer is apparent in the closely managed composition, which leaves nothing to chance but still manages to appear utterly fresh.
The Supply Boat, 1915-16, JEH MacDonald  
Join me 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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How blue is the sky?

Saussure’s Cyanometer. Should put any fears of Prussian Blue being fugitive to rest; he made this in the mid-18th century.
How blue is the sky? Landscape painters know that this varies depending on where one is standing, the season, the weather, and even the direction in which one is looking. Local conditions also apply; for example, here the sky directly to the north often fades to a softer blue from the water vapor that hangs over Lake Ontario.
Then there’s the question of altitude. With the advantage of modern travel, many of us have been to the Rockies. We know that the sky there can achieve an aching blueness that is nothing like what we see here in the east.
Baldy Mountain, Montana
“Why is the sky blue” was not actually answered until the end of the 19th century (which makes you wonder what earlier parents told their pesky children). The question of why that blueness varies in intensity was answered in the 18th century, and it was answered in part by that peculiar little device at the top of this page, the Saussure Cyanometer.
Horace-BĂ©nĂ©dict de Saussure (1740-1799) was a Genevan aristocrat and physicist who grew up climbing and studying nature.  In 1760, he hiked the Chamonix valley in France, making extensive notes and sketches, and climbed the BrĂ©vent, which faces Mont Blanc, the highest point in western Europe. 
A sky in the Steam Valley in Pennsylvania has a very different color.
In the spirit of the times, he measured and recorded everything he could. He was an inveterate tinkerer, making new instruments, including a hygrometer, a magnetometer, an anemometer,  a diaphanometer (to measure the clearness of the atmosphere) and a eudiometer. He puttered with a heliothermometer—a  thermometer to measure the intensity of the sun’s rays—and purportedly built the world’s first solar oven.
Alpine legend held that if one climbed high enough, the sky turned black and one could see into the Void.  Saussure understood, however, that the blueness of the sky was an optical effect that was somehow related to the sky’s moisture content.  
Saussure dyed paper squares with Prussian Blue (which stains terrifically dark) in every shade he could manage between white and black. He assembled these into a numbered circle that could be held up to the zenith at a standard distance from the eye.
Descent from Mont-Blanc in 1787 by H.B. de Saussure, Christian von Mechel, copper engraving, colored.

Saussure made an unsuccessful attempt on Mont Blanc in 1785. After two Chamonix men attained the summit in 1786, Saussure himself made the third ascent of the mountain in 1787. With a servant and 18 guides to lug his equipment, he reached the summit in 3 days. Saussure measured everything he could. The sky was the deepest shade he ever recorded, at 39 degrees blue (out of a rather confusing 52° circle).
Join me 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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Wrestling with God, Part 2

The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, no stranger to sin himself.
Yesterday, Sandy Quang wrote about wrestling with God and Oswald Chambers’ realization that his calling was not to art school, but to the ministry. Last night I got this note from a friend who is a Texan, a convert to Judaism, and who has sort of fallen away from her spiritual practice.  
I was staying with my friend Lester, in his guest room on the lake, while another Bubba put a new steering column in my truck for me. All day on Saturday [Yom Kippur], I was feeling guilty about not fasting, not attending service, not hearing a shofar this year… yada, yada, yada.
Lester proceeded to get totally shit-faced drunk and act like an ass on Saturday night. I had no truck, because it was at Mechanic Bubba’s.
We had to go to Walmart so I could get cash to pay Mechanic Bubba the next morning. I drove Lester‘s car because he couldn’t drive anywhere without risking arrest. (I’d been drinking tonic water.)
While I was in Walmart, a big thunderstorm rolled in. When I ran out to the car, I was drenched in 30 seconds flat. When I started to drive back to Lester’s house, I realized the defroster wasn’t working, so we had to use a towel to wipe the windshield down every 30 seconds. I could only see four feet in front of me on the highway. Someone honked at me, and I was unsure if the headlights were even on, so I asked Lester to take a look.
I should have driven off and left him standing there.
When he got back in he started cussing at me that I had lights. Was I happy that he was soaking wet? When we got back onto the highway, he really started yelling. I could, literally, see nothing in front of me; the rain was coming so hard.
I said, “Lester, you’d better stop yelling at me.” He wouldn’t stop, and I was getting mad.
Mad.
I said, “Keep talking, bud, keep talking.”
So he did. “I was a g*d d%^$*#d Air Force Navigator for twenty effin’ years! You don’t HAVE to see anything because I know where I’m going.”
I saw a bright light. I swerved to the side of the road, reached in the back seat for my purse and told him “Good luck getting home without getting arrested, because this is where I get out.”
It was 10 PM. I could see what looked like a little honkytonk, with light streaming out of the doorway and music playing.
Lester leaned over and yelled, “That big black guy down there is probably going to attack you!”
I stood in the middle of the road in the darkness, looked at drunken Lester, then looked back down the hill to the source of the light and the music. The big guy in the doorway was wearing a tallit and blowing a shofar.
And there, in the driving thunderstorm, I laughed at Lester and pointed down the hill. “I’ll be safer down there with him than up here with you!”
I sat outside that little multiracial church for over an hour waiting for a ride from my mechanic. I didn’t go in, but they were very nice and lent me a cell phone to make my call. The rest of the time I just sat outside the open door, under the eaves of the old honkytonk. The sign was even still up: “The Double Ringer.”
They had taken over the building but hadn’t even taken the honkytonk sign down yet.
I had a great time, and reveled in the irony that I got to hear the shofar and preaching, and yelling, and speaking in tongues, and laying of hands, and healing, and preaching on fornication (which I was quite proud not to have had to ask forgiveness for).
Conversion on the Way to Damascus, 1600-1601, by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. In addition to being the best-painted horse’s derriere in art history, it graphically illustrates that it’s never a good idea to turn your back on the Living God.
Hearing prayers for Israel and the Jewish people, in English and Spanish, was pretty dang cool, although I have to admit at one point, I was looking up at G-d, saying, “Why me?” But the shofar answered that, and I laughed. And I hope G-d laughs. Anyway, I’m pretty darn sure He must.
Join me 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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Answering the artist within you

Beads by Laura Turner

I have taught enough students who waited until retirement to take up painting that I always joke that when I retire, I’m taking up accounting. In fact, I have several accountant friends who do some kind of art on the side—a forensic accountant who draws, a CPA who writes comics, and a small-business accountant who makes beaded jewelry.

The last, Laura Turner, recently bought a small kiln to make fused-glass beads of her own design. What makes someone suddenly feel the urge to make jewelry? “I needed something besides reading to entertain myself while I recovered from major abdominal surgery,” she told me. “With a rectangular plastic cake carrying box, I could sit in bed to do it and lose very few beads in the covers.”
Well, there are lots of things one can do in bed that don’t involve small objects. And how do you go from stringing someone else’s beads to making your own?
Bead by Laura Turner
“Making a piece of jewelry from scratch, not using pre-manufactured focals and findings, is much more satisfying, she said. “It’s also much more time-consuming. So it’s an adventure again, whereas beading alone had begun to be something of a chore.”
As all artists know, new disciplines mean new costs. “There’s always another tool needed.” Considering it’s just baked sand, glass is remarkably expensive, she says. “Because I live out in the sticks, most of my purchases are online, so I incur shipping costs as well. As much as I love buying on the internet, the truth is that sometimes what you get is not what you thought you were getting.”
Of course she’s eyeing a bigger kiln now. She’s an artist.
I asked her what she gets out of the process. “A sense of achievement, a sense of completion. A sense of embracing the colors I’m working with, and the feeling that whatever I make somehow expresses something inside me,” she answered.

Join me 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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Here’s to you, Dad

Portrait of Ann Douglas, by John P. Douglas, pastel on paper, c. 1969
Last week I wrote, “My father loved Maine, painting, and sailing wooden boats. Several times this week when I signed my paintings I thought of how amazed and happy he would have been to see his daughter getting paid to stand on a dock in Maine, painting wooden boats. Here’s to you, Dad. Thanks for teaching me to paint and draw and sail.”
When a reader responded to the above by asking me to share some of my father’s work, I hesitated.
I have only one piece by my father. This is a posthumous portrait of my sister, who died at age 14. These were very dark days in my family, because just a few years later, my parents also lost a son to a drunk driver. If I had a choice of his work to share, it would not be the piece that reminds me of such sad times.
My sister was a very larky girl. My father caught that, even in his deep grief. Although done from memory, it’s a good likeness. Decades later, I can still see the spark of her personality, which photographs never seemed to capture.
My father was born in 1924. By the time he graduated from high school, he could draw, he could letter, and he could print black-and-white photos as well as most BFA holders today. He intended to go to art school, but that plan was interrupted by WWII.
Can’t imagine why signing my name while painting in Camden (bottom) would put me in mind of my father (top)
I doubt my father taught us to paint and draw because he wanted us to go into the arts—he just saw art as a basic function of a well-rounded personality. And, I’m sure, he also wanted to keep us busy.
Join me 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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Seeking beauty in the built environment

Northbound on 10th, 16×22, acrylic, by Patti Mollica
A lot of painters focus on either the natural or the man-made environment; I truly love painting both. In the built environment, I see both the best and worst of mankind. In the landscape I see God’s hand-print. I love the intersection of these two elemental forces.
I recently asked my pals who are doing Rye Art Center’s Painters on Location with me to let me post their silent auction pieces on my blog. Today’s contribution is by Patti Mollica. She captures the excitement of New York’s streets as well as anyone I know.  

Interested in my Where the Sea Meets the Sky Workshops? October 2013—the last session with openings in 2013—is selling out fast. Or, let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information, or email Lakewatch Manor!
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Desperately seeking the Immaculata (and other things)

Summer Sky, by Marilyn Fairman, oil on linen, 9X12. It’s another entry in Rye Painters on Location’s silent auction, and a darn lovely one, too! If I had more time, I’d see Marilyn more than once a year, right?
A few weeks ago I talked with a wonderful New Hampshire-based painter who is busy raising two daughters, ages 10 and 12. He struggles to have time to advance his career. I sympathize; I have four kids myself. And yet, I told him, I would not change the choices I’d made.
I like to think it’s easier now that my kids are older, but all I need to revise that opinion is to commit myself to reaching a goal by Friday. This week’s goal is in itself parenting-related, since we’re expecting out-of-town company for my daughter’s wedding shower. My family has been outstanding at keeping the house up, but a lot of clutter and grunge accumulates when the mom is gone as much as I am.
I foolishly believed I could devote four hours a day to cleaning and four hours a day to painting. Hah. I haven’t even got the receipts from my summer travels off the dining room table, and I’ve been at it for two days.
Today I met with a gallery director at a local college to finalize plans for a show next spring. The show will be about the relationship between God and man in the natural world, and I’m very excited to have the opportunity to do something so dear to me.
The lesson in this is that I do not have the luxury of procrastination. There are so many interruptions in a busy life, one must grab the time one has. March is just around the corner.

Interested in my Where the Sea Meets the Sky Workshops? October 2013—the last session with openings in 2013—is selling out fast. Or, let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information, or email Lakewatch Manor!
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It’s almost time for Rye Painters on Location again!

My piece for Rye POL’s Silent Auction: Gold Mountain Air, oil on canvasboard, 11X14.
Some of my Best Painting Buds (BPBs) are people I met at Rye Painters on Location: Bruce Bundock and Marilyn Fairman, for example. Another of my other BPBs—Brad Marshall—is someone I recommended to the organizers (as did Lee Haber). There are also painters I like so much but never see except at POL—Kathy Buist, Patti Mollica, Linda Richichi, Tarryl Gabyl, and others. It’s always been my favorite event, so the last few years when they tinkered with it, I was kind of bummed.
Brad Marshall’s piece for the Silent Auction: Watermelon and Cherries, oil on canvasboard, 11X14.

Linda Richichi’s piece for the Silent Auction:Wetland Pink, pastel, 9X12.
But it’s back in its old format: silent auction of prepared pieces, live auction of wet canvases. And it’s coming up soon: September 28. I will be in Maine that prior week, and plan to race down to Rye to meet Brad Marshall for some fun times “flailing around.” After that, we’ll wash our faces, have a few glasses of wine with our friends, and sit back to watch the auction.
Having done this for a lot of years, I feel like I’ve painted an awful lot of the Long Island Sound scenery. I suggested that Brad should choose our painting location and I’ll just come along to fall into the ocean and generally make a mess. He was amenable, and last week he drove up to drop off his silent auction piece and scout locations. I now know where we’ll be painting; you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?
If you haven’t registered for my workshops but want to, know that October 2013—last session with openings in 2013—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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Better than working in a cube farm?

Darn it, I KNOW I took a photo of my easel in the manure pile, but I can’t find it! So you’re stuck with the rather-more-normal wet canvas. Never good when someone decides to blot it out for you, which has happened, of course.
I received an amusing text from a friend this morning that said, “Tough living, this artist stuff. But perhaps less stressful than [a Fortune 500 company at which he works].”
“You really think so?” I responded. Painting for a living has many advantages, but a stress-free life is not among them.
My pal Brad Van Auken is fond of quoting Malcolm Gladwell’s  Outliers: The Story of Success and its 10,000-Hour Rule. This posits that the key to success in any field is a matter of practicing a specific task for around 10,000 hours.
That would be about five years of full-time work, which is indeed about what a person needs to do to be a good painter. Of course, that’s also more or less equivalent to a graduate degree.
However, painting combines a high level of technical training with the brute force of physical labor. That has led to some wonderful snafus. Consider the time I dumped my easel over a wall and into a manure pile. Or the time I dropped my brushes into Braddock Bay.  Or the time my car battery died on a sub-zero day and I had to hike to a farmhouse to cadge a jump.  Or the time my car battery died in the Adirondacks and my friend Marilyn Fairman had to hike to a place in cell phone range to call for help. Or the time I sent my umbrella sailing into the Rio Grande, never to be seen again.

When people comment about how much fun painting is—and it is—they aren’t paying attention to the training, the commuting, or the back-office work. They’re reacting to the sheer physicality of it, about not being stuck in an office or a cube farm. In modern America, everyone really wants to be a manual laborer; some of us have actually figured out how to do it.

If you haven’t registered for my workshops but want to, know that October 2013—last session with openings in 2013—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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Bid early! Bid often!

Painting on a floating dock during the Quick-Draw. My preferred vantage point for boats. (Photo by Howard Gallagher)
I have an informal contest with a Maine pal about which of us can be mentioned most often in the media. Until this week, we were tied, but I think I just out-paced him with photos in the Penbay Pilot and the Camden Herald.
Saturday is my 33rd wedding anniversary and my Dear Spouse has been very even-keeled (ahem) about my being away so often, so I will reluctantly miss the auction of our paintings.
Two works will be in it, this:
Camden and Mt. Battie, oil on linen board, 12X16
And this:
The Schooner Mercantile, oil on canvasboard, 11X13
The Wet Paint Auction will be held on Saturday, September 7 from 6:30-7:30pm at the Bok Amphitheatre in Camden Harbor Park, located behind the Camden Public Library. (A bit of trivia: these gardens were designed by the Olmstead Brothers and Fletcher Steele in 1931, and they are worth the trip to Camden in their own right.) There will be a preview prior to the auction, from 5:30-6:30pm. Kaja Veilleux of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries will conduct live bidding.
However, you can also bid long distance, via email by clicking here. Absentee bidding will close at noon on Friday, September 6. Absentee bids must include your name, address, home and cell phone, email address, name of artist, title of painting and maximum bid (not including tax or shipping). Absentee bidders will be notified of the results on Sunday, September 8.

Yesterday I said that there are three beginning painters signed up for the October session. I stand corrected—there are three novices, one intermediate, and one advanced painter. If you haven’t registered but want to, know that October 2013—last session with openings in 2013—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!