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Category: plein air

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If every plant has a toxic relative, why wouldn’t that be true for people as well?

I’ve painted the Erie Canal all over the place (this one time in Gasport, NY). How much more can it teach me, right?

The plein airinstructor has a lot more to do than simply show up and coax brilliance out of her students. She must first reconnoiter: is there a way to get equipment from a staging area to the painting site? Are there bathrooms? Even better, can you get a cup of coffee anywhere nearby?
I aim to know where every
Porta-Potty in the Northeast
is before I’m through.
It also behooves the plein air teacher to have a comprehensive knowledge of plants and trees. Not only does it help figure out when a painting site will be at its best, but it can also help avoid a disastrous encounter with, say, poison ivy.
My friend Mary has been urging me to explore the canal between Schoen Place and the Great Embankment in Pittsford. I’ve painted frequently in both places and many others on the canal besides. What could this little strip of land have that I haven’t already seen?
I found a lovely red barn against which was growing one of my favorite springtime plants, Greater Celandine (chelidonium), which is remarkable both for its lovely yellow flowers and for its many pharmacological and herbal uses. The Celandine will survive a week of rain and be there next week. But what is that lurking next to it? Not a Queen Anne’s Lace, but its toxic and invasive Giant Hogweedcousin, which causes nasty contact dermatitis.
A Giant Hogweed unfurling its leaves in the middle of a view I admire. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
And just a little further down the path sits another noxious member of the carrot family: water hemlock. It has to be ingested to kill you, but it’s the most toxic plant growing in America and nearly a dead ringer for benign Queen Anne’s Lace.
And another Queen Anne’s Lace ringer, water hemlock. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
It happens so frequently in nature: deadly wolfsbane is in the same family as harmless little buttercups. Sumacs include poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, and a whole host of benign and lovely relatives.
In a lifetime of talking people through their problems, I’ve recently concluded that having a toxic person or two in a family isn’t the exception; it’s the rule. But it wasn’t until I was walking in the woods today that I realized that this is the way we’re designed. That isn’t a solution to the problems caused by toxic relatives, but I suppose it makes them easier to bear.
A thousand greens, our canal. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
(And I must admit that the site Mary found, just east of Schoen Place, meets all my criteria and provides a unique view of the canal. Now to find a time to paint it, since it’s going to rain for the next three days.)
Whoa, Nellie! August and September are sold out at Lakewatch Manor.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

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The old folks flit, the young fly home

Drawing by Kamillah Ramos, an architecture student at SUNY Buffalo
I’m always a bit shocked when my former students return from college, for every year they come home with more mature features and more adult demeanor. May is the month when seasoned students flit and youngsters fly home, at least for a little while.
The water is much clearer than last month. The train still barrels right over the falls, however.
On Saturday, I had several of them with me on the Pont de Rennes bridge. It was significantly warmer than when Carol Thiel and I painted there last month, and the water is far clearer now that we’ve passed the April freshets.
Teressa drawing. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)
If I have a theme I harp on over and over it’s the power of drawing. Drawings aren’t precious; recognizing that gives us the freedom to take chances, to screw up. The fear of failing is the most debilitating thing in the artistic process, so there’s freedom in the common #2 pencil. Drawing first allows an artist to focus on observation, making the painting phase far more fluid.
It was windy again Saturday, hence the water-bottle counterweight. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)
So it wasn’t exactly a surprise that most of my students were drawing. All that industrial architecture was crying out for a pencil. And I was blown away by how much my college-age kids’ drawing had matured, along with their faces and their demeanor.
Bella tried watercolor for the first time.
Moved almost to tears by their growth I was—until I noticed two of them spitting over the rail. “We’re studying aerodynamics,” they explained.
OK, maybe one more year…
And Kamillah herself.
If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
Any resemblance between these two is completely coincidental.

PS. This was in yesterday’s Democrat and Chronicle. It was our class in Highland Park two weeks ago:

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To each their own, within limits of course…

Look, Ma! No red! The red tones are made of quinacridone violet and  cadmium orange. (Finger Lakes marshes in autumn, 14X18, oil on canvasboard)

JG writes: What red do you like for plein air painting? Are there any substitutes for cadmium red that work as well but are cheaper?
Dear JG: I have pigments I like that others will find incomprehensible. That’s not just a question of personal taste; it is also a matter of where you live and the colors of the rocks, the soil, the foliage and the light.
I stopped using cadmium red many years ago because I could never use it up before the tubes hardened. It seems like a pricey paint to use as a modulator for greens. Where I live, there are few naturally-occurring true reds, even in the headiest autumn days, and cadmium red always seemed to obtrude unnecessarily. For a time I substituted naphthol red. It’s cheaper, tends to harden in the tube less quickly, and is less chalky when mixed with white. However, it tends (like cadmium red) to make muddy violets.
A few years ago, I stopped using red completely, and now I mix a combination of quinacridone violet and cadmium orange as an approximate substitute for red in the landscape. (I still use cadmium red for figure painting.) That gives me the weight of cadmium red, but it’s slightly less glaring, and the quinacridone violet permits me to mix to the blue-violet side without muddiness.
And while we’re on the subject, there are no greens in this painting, either.  (Catskill waterfall, 11X14, oil on canvas)
CB writes: I bought a paint labeled “Cerulean Blue Hue” that was a lot cheaper than the Cerulean Blue. What’s the difference?
Dear CB: A paint that is called a “hue,” such as “cadmium red hue,” is made of a blend of less-expensive pigments. There is nothing inherently wrong with these pigments, but they don’t behave the same as the more expensive ones, and you should at least know what you’re buying.
Every tube of paint made by a reputable manufacturer has a Color Index Name in really tiny type. This—rather than the seductive and often romanticized paint name—is what you should pay attention to. It’s a simple code, and no chemistry knowledge is necessary.
The vast majority of paints start with the letter P, which means it’s a pigment. Following that is a letter that indicates the basic hue family: R for red, O for orange, Y for yellow, G for green, B for blue, V for violet, Br for brown, W for white, Bk for black. Then there’s a number referring to the specific pigment itself. This is the best chart I know for paint pigments; it was designed for watercolor, but the pigment characteristics are the same through all media.
Generally speaking, there’s little to be gained by buying a hue mimicking a more expensive pigment. If you are comfortable painting with Cerulean Blue’s proximate, then it behooves you to learn what’s in it and mix it yourself, since you always have the greatest flexibility by working with pure pigments (rather than mixes) out of the tube.
If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
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Painting at the Lilac Festival with my young friends

Lilac Festival, Highland Park, 11X14, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me.

My Jewish neighbors are celebrating Shavuot, which commemorates the day God gave the Torah to the nation of Israel. We Christians will observe Pentecostthis coming Sunday, when we will commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. The two holidays are closely related, and they are both based on the idea of gifts from God.

We are often so quick to throw away God’s blessings. A friend told me that she was advised to stop eating tomatoes for health reasons. “But Galicia has the best tomatoes in the world,” she said. “I can’t not eat them. It would be a sin.”
Sam spent most of his time talking to curious passers-by.
For some unfathomable reason, the human animal loves making rules by which he denies himself pleasure. The first and deepest of these revolve around food. Whether we are talking about the dietary restrictions of religion or the modern rules guiding the “worried well,” the end result is the same: self-denial that purports to make us better on physical, moral, or spiritual planes.
One of the “delicacies” of the Lilac Festival is deep-fried turkey legs. I will not embarrass the young person who actually attempted to eat one. I hope he survives.
Last Saturday, I made a tentative date to paint at the Lilac Festival today with Bella, Sam, and Jake. Today dawned with that delicate, airy beauty that is unique to spring in the Northeast. But I have a lot of non-painting work to do, and I felt torn—should I be “responsible,” or should I go paint with my young friends. But I realized that I couldn’t knowingly toss out this gift of a beautiful day, given me to enjoy by a God who loves me. And it was wonderful, and it was a joy, and an old geezer stopped by and told me a great joke:
 â€śWhat is difference between a professional artist and a Domino’s pizza?
“The pizza can feed a family of four.”
Bella struggling to keep her easel upright.
There are still spots open in our mid-coast Maine plein air workshops! Check here for more information.
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I’m honored to have been selected to participate in the 2013 Castine Plein Air Festival

The first year I did Rye’s Painters on Location, I painted a lovely, long, low sailboat from a spot overlooking Mamaroneck Harbor. Living as I do in the Great Lakes basin, I’ve drawn and painted boats frequently enough. What I had overlooked was the tide, which confused me with constant angle changes.
My last painting for Rye’s Painters on Location. Mamaroneck Harbor, 18X24, oil on canvas. 
Mercifully, the boat’s owner was among the bidders that night and I escaped with my pride intact. The last few years I painted in that event, I worked in the same harbor, but from floating docks. This was much easier from a drafting standpoint but tough on the legs after two days.
Penobscot view, February 2013. Not Castine proper but close enough. How much more beautiful this will be come summer!
Such are the vicissitudes of painting in a plein air event. You can think you understand the subject, but still be confused at the point when your brush hits the canvas.
Last February, I took my family on an odd little pilgrimage up Castine way, looking for the West Brooksville childhood home of one of my chums. It was unutterably beautiful in February; imagine how lovely it will be in July!
Off-roading in Holbrook Island Sanctuary State Park, in my little Prius. Take that, you 4-wheel-drive vehicles!
Every inch of the coast of Maine is simply beautiful. One would be hard-pressed to come up with a favorite stretch of rock-bound coastline. And even within particular regions, there are so many choices! What will I paint? My pal recommended Our Lady of Holy Hope on Perkins Street, or sunrise at the Tidal Pool, or the Main Square. Any other suggestions?
At any rate, come watch me paint in Castine on July 27, and be sure to say hi when you see me. Or take my Maine painting workshops in the Rockland area—once a month through the summer months (check herefor more info, or email me). 

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Ice Tsunamis? Seriously?

It is almost this cold in Rochester right now…

There has been a bitter wind blowing from the west for the last several days. It snow-squalled lightly in Western New York this weekend and it is flurrying in Saranac Laketoday. But at least we’re not experiencing ice tsunamislike those in Minnesota and Manitoba.
How does the plein airpainter facing a Little Ice Age (or floods, drought, hail, or locusts) prepare? I am a fan of the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph.
Another of my favorite things… the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph. It tells me everything I need to know.
Above I’ve posted a screenshot of this afternoon’s graph for my neck of the woods. The most pressing issue is that the temperature will rise and the wind will drop this week…not just for us outdoor painters, but also for the organizers of Rochester’s Lilac Festival. And it’s certainly useful to know that the rain is done for a while.
But I could get that information from the newspaper. What the graph gives me that I don’t find elsewhere is the Sky Coverage forecast. This evening and tomorrow evening, the cloud cover should diminish at dusk, giving us the potential for beautiful sunsets. I can set my schedule accordingly.
Of course, different parts of the graph will be more useful in different parts of the country. We’re seldom overheated up here in the far north, but if I were in Arizona, I’d care a great deal about the Heat Index.
This year, I’ve been watching the weather in two places: Rochester, NY and Rockland, ME. Maine tends to be warmer in winter and cooler in summer than we are here inland. Makes for good painting, so if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
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That finely-tuned, whole-body drawing machine

Bella and Jake practice standing in counterpose.

Yesterday, I stepped up to Jake’s easel to demonstrate stealth gesture drawing. Our subject was Bella, who was deeply absorbed in drawing tiny redbud blossoms. Bella, who is athletic and graceful, was standing like a column in front of her easel, a perfect plumb-line from her head to her pressed-together high-tops. “How do you even do that?” I asked her. “I would fall over.”

What is perfect for gymnastics or dancing may not be perfect for drawing. Nobody would ever accuse me of perfect posture. Nevertheless, I work standing at an easel for hours at a time.
I pondered my own stance while drawing. My non-dominant (right) leg was bearing my weight. My left foot was turned so the outside of my toe-box was touching the ground. This provided a pivot point to control my position, allowing my spine to move in concert with my drawing arm. Not that I stand like this all the time, or that any two successful artists do it the same way, but a good drawing stance is dynamic.
The Peplos Kore, c 530 BC, was clearly drawing (ahem). She’s also standing in counterpose (contrapposto). Although she’s using her left hand, her weight is on her left leg. (Acropolis Museum, Athens)
“Bella,” I said, “try standing on one foot and see if it changes your drawing style.” The difference was significant. Her mark-making was immediately lighter and more controlled.

Jake didn’t just stand around in counterpose… he also drew this house.

We all know that painting while seated yields different results from painting while standing. (The former gives better control; the latter yields freer expression.) So it stands to reason that standing differently gives different results as well. The human body is a wonderful, finely-tuned machine. Change one parameter, and everything else adjusts to fit. 

(On that note, did you know there is not one but many arches to the foot, and they act as springs? Awesome design, that!)
We have a good time in the studio, on the street, and in the park.  And if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
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Painting with Friends

Durand-Eastman in early Spring, 11X14, oil on canvasboard. I am not that keen on early Spring colors, which to me often look clichéd, and I didn’t like this when I painted it. I like it a lot more now. It’s brassy—just like me.

Marilyn Feinberg was raised in Irondequoit, so it is no surprise that she was drawn to Durand-Eastman Park. We painted there in every season, but this painting was done on a cold Spring day when we were still in down jackets and crocheted toques. Marilyn’s coat was orange and her hat purple, which is why (I think) a local news photographer spotted and photographed us. (I’ve been photographed painting innumerable times and never when well-dressed. Yes, that begs the question.)

Marilyn and I painted together forever: when we started, we could jog the trails at High Tor on our breaks, tolerate freezing our paints in a vineyard, or nearly be washed away on a bridge in a torrential downpour. By the time she and her husband retired to Florida, we were somewhat more sedate, and marginally more sensible.
Oakland Shores Motel and Cabins, Rockland, ME, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, painted while traveling with Kristin Zimmermann.
Another painting buddy of long standing is Kristin Zimmermann. She is definitely an urban animal. Occasionally I could cajole her to leave Manhattan, but she isn’t that keen on all that green. That’s fine; I ♥ New York too. I’m accustomed to using a car to move my painting kit around, and using the subway requires miniaturization. I learned a lot about efficient packing from Kristin, but she never could stop me from tripping over my own feet.
Lake Champlain from on top of a stupid cliff, 11X14, oil on canvasboard
Then there is my young painting buddy, Matthew Menzies, who is at Rhode Island School of Design now. He painted with me while in high school. Matt spun a tale one day in which I died by falling off a cliff at High Tor, after which he and Marilyn discovered that I had the car keys in my pocket.
Last summer, Matt and I met up in Burlington, VT to paint together. Far be it from us to set up someplace sensible: we found our best view from a narrow ridge, hoisting our kits 25 feet up an almost vertical incline. I am happy to report that I am still alive.
If you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information. There’s still room in my workshops.
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I’ve never painted in a little black dress before

Carey Corea’s mural for ABVI

On Saturday, June 1, I will be painting a live plein air painting for the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired’s (ABVI) Play It Forward hosted by Macy’s. This event is to celebrate ABVI’s construction of an Outdoor Mobility Training Area, which will help visually-impaired children and adults learn to more easily navigate their world.
ABVI, founded in 1911, provides vision rehab services to the Greater Rochester, Finger Lakes, and Southern Tier areas.
ABVI will be able to provide outdoor
mobility training on a variety of surfaces
in their new outdoor area.
The new garden area includes adaptive equipment for children that will allow them to climb, jump, run and play just like their sighted peers. A decade ago, I helped design gardens around handicapped-access modifications at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, so this project is exciting to me.
The painting I do of this garden (and I pray it will be fantastic) will be auctioned off to benefit the project. I urge my fans to attend; it’s a fantastic way to get an original painting by me and support a great project, as well as to see me with my hair combed and struggling to keep paint off my clothes.
In addition, ABVI will be unveiling a mural by Rochester artist Carey Corea, a very fine non-objective painter. He’s an RIT graduate and long-term commercial artist in Rochester. I haven’t seen his mural in person, and I’m excited to do so.
Just the facts:
Saturday, June 1, 2013
6:00 – 9:00 PM
ABVI’s New Vision Rehabilitation Center
500 S. Clinton Ave.
Rochester, NY 14620
Emceed by radio personality and friend of ABVI, Steve Hausmann
Open bar
Hearty hors d’oeuvres to tempt the kid in all of us
Games
Silent and live auctions
Cocktail attire suggested
Event tickets are $100 per person.
Tickets are also available for a VIP reception from 5:00 – 6:00 PM for $150 per person. VIP Reception attendees will have an opportunity to pre-bid on silent auction items.
RSVP by May 17, 2013. For more information, please call Debra at (585) 697-5711 or e-mail: [email protected].

There are still spots open in our mid-coast Maine plein air workshops! Check here for more information.

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The truth is, I have no friggin’ idea what I’m doing.

Spring in Glen Park, 10X12, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me.

I once watched Lee Haber finish a lovely painting at Rye Painters on Location in less time than it took me to fall over my easel. I really admire plein air painters who never seem to “flail around” (as my pal Brad Marshall once memorably called it). I imagine they have a protocol by which they approach their painting; it allows them to work fast and focus on what they’re seeing rather than the mess they’re making.

I have a protocol too, but it’s unfortunately dynamic. I’m a restless soul; if I master an idea, I need to move on to the next idea. It’s why I never end up with highly-finished paintings; when the conclusion is obvious, I move on. That means on some level I’m constantly flailing. (This is not a trait I admire in myself, by the way; I think it would be nice to just luxuriate in the paint once in a while.)
My masterpiece: that’s my 20-year-old daughter, studying for her physics final.
This is not to say that nothing stays the same: in oil painting there are some fairly inviolable rules that only a masochist or a neophyte would break. But there many things that you can mash up, and it seems like I’m constantly running through my bag of tricks to find some exciting way of fleshing out a thorny passage. Sometimes it works and sometimes it makes a terrific mess.
Two parrots stopped to watch me paint. “I love that,”
said the one on the left. It’s because of the green, I think.
 This only matters when I have an audience, since in the privacy of my own studio I dump all my sketches in a towering heap and ignore them. Generally when I paint in public, I am very conscious of the people around me, and I end up spending lots of my time talking with them. This is one of my Favorite Things, but I also unconsciously tend to paint “prettier” when painting for an audience.
Today I visited lovely Glen Park in Williamsville. Since it is a busy suburban park, I even combed my hair in expectation of chance encounters with strangers. But those crazy Buffalonians were excessively respectful of my privacy.
My fantastic paint box, and my fantastic ball cap hair.
Good thing, because I was rapidly down another rabbit hole—my favorite place to be, of course.  I never know if a field painting is “good” when I’m working on it, or even immediately after finishing it. (And I think most other painters don’t know either; they just know if the painting they’ve done matches their idea of how they’ve painted so far.) I simply see a series of problems to be solved. In this case, there was a triad of trees whose branches paired with the little creek to enfold the bridge into an ellipse. Had I had a little more time, I would have worked more carefully on the structure of lights and darks in the unfurling leaves. But who ever has enough time?
There are still spots open in our mid-coast Maine plein air workshops! Check here for more information.