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Category: plein air

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Traveling truths

Catskills over Athens, NY, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas. The grass is courtesy of a park worker who was string-trimming nearby. Not to worry; it will pick off when the painting is dry.
When Nancy Woogen and I were painting at North –South Lake on Thursday, a woman glided past us in her kayak. “Oh, you’re painters!” she exclaimed. “May I join you?”
Turns out she has been looking for her tribe. I introduced her to my pal Jamie Williams Grossman, chair of Lower Hudson Valley Plein Air Painters. We arranged to meet the following day at Site #9 on the Hudson River Art Trail, also known as Promenade Hill Park in Hudson, NY.
A tug approaching the Athens-Hudson Lighthouse in the Hudson River.
Like many upstate New York towns, Hudson went into decline after its primary industry was closed down, but its industry wasn’t the usual paper or steel mill. For a century, Hudson was notoriousfor vice. Its red-light district included 50 bars, 15 whorehouses, two major illegal horse gambling rooms and a big-stakes floating crap game—all in a community of just a few thousand people. A series of high-profile raids in 1951 put an end to that. Hudson slumped into the familiar pattern of decay.
Power lines crossing the Hudson, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas.
It’s been gentrified since my last visit, driven into the inexorable real-estate maw of New York City. This is great for the landowners of Columbia County, and not so good for those who need to buy or rent houses.
I talked to an artist who commutes to Manhattan and who is considering relocating to Troy, farther upriver. “Two hours on the train I can handle,” she said. “But two and a half is just too much.” Having done my time commuting from Rochester to Manhattan, I understand.
I painted a half-day at Promenade Hill, and decided to start the trek back to Rockport, ME, where my commute is, well, nothing at all.

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.
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Friends

Olana Overlook, 6X8, Carol L. Douglas
Painting at a site for the first time is kind of like dating in middle school—you’re drawn to flash. It takes a while to see the quality in the quieter subjects. This is the third retreat I’ve painted at Olana. I’ve gotten the big vistas out of the way and am starting to be drawn to deeper, more intimate views.
Compared to my mid-Hudson pals, I’m still at a disadvantage. “That’s a lovely little tree,” I said to Jamie Grossman.
“I know,” she answered. “I’ve painted it three times.”
Garden Lane, Olana, 8X10, Carol L. Douglas
In July, I’ll be back at Olana for the Fourth Annual Plein Air Paint Out and Festival. In some ways, yesterday’s painting was reconnaissance.
Since I am tired and rusty, I figured that getting all my gear down to mid-Hudson and actually set up would count as success. Actually painting anything would be a bonus.  I opened the cooler in which I keep my paints—only to find that I’d brought my framing tools instead.
You can improvise a lot in painting, but paints are a necessity.
Coreopsis, 8X10, Carol L. Douglas.
Immediately several people jumped forward to offer me theirs. Turns out I had enough loose paint on my palette for the day. But it’s heartwarming to know I have such good friends.

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.

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Oh, happy day!

Overlook at Olana, 9X12, by Carol L. Douglas
There is a limit to the mileage you can get out of caffeine and vitamins, and although I haven’t hit it yet, I sense the end is near. And yet today is one of the maddest, gladdest days of my painting year and it’s dawning spectacularly. This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Sketch for south façade of the main house at Olana, Frederic Edwin Church, c. 1870, watercolor, ink and graphite on paper.
Every year, the chapters of New York Plein Air Painters congregate at Olana for a one-day paintout and picnic lunch. Olana is the palatial home of Hudson River School painter Frederic Church. It overlooks the Hudson, with fantastic vistas in every direction.
Olana is not just your typical rich man’s confection of Victorian whimsy. It was designed by architect Calvert Vaux but the influence of the artist is apparent everywhere.
Painting at Olana with Nancy Woogen, right.
In the fall of 1869 Frederic and Isabel Church returned from an 18-month-long trip to Europe and the Middle East. Impressed by the architecture they saw in Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus, they envisioned a home that would incorporate Moorish elements. 
The facade at Olana.
As many times as I’ve looked at the house, it never fully registered to me that the cornices were not tiled, but stenciled. Church translated the tile work he saw in Islamic mosques into stencil patterns, which he used inside and out. Hundreds of his pencil and oil sketches for them survive.

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.


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Painting in Paradise

My painting of the Dyce Head Light from last year.
Because I can count on my fingers, I was distressed to read that artist Bobbi Heath is going to be on crutches for the next eight weeks. That brings us perilously close to Castine Plein Air, where she and 40 other fantastic artists (including me) will be painting from July 23 to 25.
This is the third annual Castine Plein Air Festival, and in that short time, it’s shot to the top of my favorites list, right up there with the Rye Art Center’s Painters on Location. It’s not just because my friends are going to be there, although that’s certainly part of it.
Me, painting at Oakum Bay (Courtesy of Castine Arts Association)
Castine sits at a commanding position at the mouth of the Penobscot River estuary. In the age of the fur trade, it controlled about 8000 square miles of prime hunting land. It was occupied by the Penobscot people, and its age of exploration opened with a visit by the Portuguese explorer Estêvão Gomes in 1524. He was followed by our old friend Samuel de Champlain in 1605. In 1669, the Mohawk raided.
Mary Byrom, painting at Wadsworth Cove. Life’s a beach. (Courtesy of Castine Arts Association) 
No town with that kind of reach was going to be allowed to sit unmolested, and at some point, the French, Dutch, English and Americans all had their hands in.
I mention this because the town is absolutely full of historic sites. The town itself is graciously old New England, with clapboard houses skirting down to the water, the Maine Maritime Academy, the Dyce Head Light, and beautiful waterfront views everywhere. There’s even a little beach.
I did this painting of a reenactor’s tent at the Castine Historical Society last year.
Very few people wander across Castine by accident. It is unspoiled, but the downside of that is that accommodations are limited. So if this paint-out in an unspoiled landscape appeals to you, you should make reservationsnow.

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.
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Utopia among the carnivorous plants

Floating sedges at the Irondequoit Inn, 20X16, oil on canvasboard.
I love boreal bogs. There’s a terrific one at Quoddy Head in Lubec and there’s Corea Heath which we’ll be visiting in August. New York’s Adirondacks are chock-full of them, including Barnum Bog at Paul Smith’s VIC.
A bog is a nutrient-poor acidic wetland dominated by sphagnum mosses, sedges, and shrubs and evergreen trees rooted in deep peat. This is in contrast to a marsh, which is dominated by grasses, rushes or reeds, and often sits at the edge of open water. Swamps are forested wetlands containing slow-moving to stagnant waters; they too are usually attached to open water.
Weather Moving In At Barnum Bog, 12X9, oil on canvasboard.
All of these have their attractions, but none is as lovely as a bog. It is a feast of color even when the rest of the landscape is uniformly green.
Bogs are built on a base of sphagnum, which is a genus of about 120 different plants commonly lumped together as peat moss. Sphagnum and sedges sometimes make floating  mats along the edges of open water; I’ve painted these mats in Piseco many times. It’s tricky to gauge their color, which runs from purple at the base to green and orange in the foliage.
The Dugs in Autumn, 11X14, oil on canvasboard.
Sundews and pitcher plants are hardy, long-lived perennial plants that have found a niche chowing down insects. They rise straight above the sphagnum with flower heads in snappy red, green and purple. Dwarf cranberry and Labrador tea shrubs form low mounds. Poking out through this mess are stunted evergreens attempting to get a foothold on the peat cushion. And usually there’s a vast semicircle of pines framing the scene, and perhaps a mountain rising in the distance. Bogs are a painter’s paradise, often ignored for flashier scenes.
Autumn Sedges, 6X8, oil on canvasboard.
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.
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Hidden gems

A vintage photo of the Tidal Falls from August 1954, by Ellis Holt.
Yesterday I was packing art books when I came across a forgotten little volume, The Plein Air Artist Guide to Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island, by Gail Ribas. Leafing through it, I realized that students driving to my workshop at Schoodic Point will drive right past the Tidal Falls at Hancock.
The Tidal Falls is about halfway between Ellsworth and the turnoff to Winter Harbor.
Reversing falls are caused when tides force water up against a prevailing current. They dot the coast: in Blue Hill and Lincoln, ME, at Cobscook Bay down east, and on the St. John River in New Brunswick. And there’s one right along our motor route to Schoodic.
Corea Heath is also managed by the Frenchman Bay Conservancy (photo by Bob DeForrest)
The farther north you wander in Maine, the bigger the tidal range gets. In fact, the highest tidal range in the world is not far away, at Burntcoat Head in Nova Scotia. Its mean spring range is 47.5 feet and its extreme range is 53.5 feet. The bigger the tide, the more noticeable the reversing falls phenomenon is. (I suppose that’s why nobody notices them in the Great Lakes.)
It’s amazing what you find when you start packing.
The Frenchman Bay Conservancy owns 4.2 acres overlooking the Tidal Falls at Hancock. There are a pavilion, picnic tables and grills—in short, the perfect set-up for a break from driving.
Beautiful Corea, ME.
I love a good boreal bog, so I’m excited about another property owned by the Conservancy: Corea Heath. This is on my workshop itinerary for the week, so you don’t need to hunt it out on your own. It’s a 600-acre habitat for inland and coastal waterfowl and wading birds, migrating land birds, and rare plants.
Rising from the edge of the wetland complex is a mixed forest of hardwoods, spruce, fir and pine, including a beautiful stand of the fire-dependent jack pine.

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.
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Prettiest places in Maine

Wadsworth Cove (Castine), by Carol L. Douglas

Down East recently did a poll asking its visitors to identify the prettiest villages in Maine. It’s nice to see that many of my favorite haunts have made the list:

1. Camden
2. Boothbay Harbor
3. Damariscotta
4. Wiscasset
5. Kennebunkport
6. Rockport
7. Stonington
8. Castine
9. Blue Hill
10. Northeast Harbor

I might add a few other places to this list, including Round Pond, Lubec, Corea, Bayside, and Searsport.

Damariscotta, by Carol L. Douglas

I’m sitting here in off-the-grid Waldoboro, ME this morning, thinking of how many of these places I’ve painted in, and enjoying the idea that I’m going to be able to spend this summer painting in all of them again. More on that tomorrow.

A FitzHugh Lane Day at Camden, by Carol L. Douglas

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.

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Paint and sip

On the left is Chrissy Spoor Pahucki’s rogue painting from a paint-and-sip event. “Elena’s painting on the right looks like the demo and is what I was supposed to be doing,” she said.
About once a week, someone tells me that I should get a gig doing one of those ‘paint and sip’ party events, since it’s clear they rake in the dough like mad. I’m all for painting with wine at hand, but that’s as far as my interest goes.
Chrissy Spoor Pahucki teaches art at C. J. Hooker Middle School in Goshen, NY. She’s tremendously creative, one of those teachers you wish every kid could have. She’s also a talented plein air painter, and we run across each other at events in the summer.
On Friday, I caught her musing, “I’m anxious about what kind of paintbrushes they will have at this paint-and-sip event and I’m resisting the temptation to bring my own like a geek.” To me, being invited to one would be almost as difficult as having to teach one, so I was dying to see what she’d do with it.
“I’ve never forced myself to work with a limited palette before, but here are the colors I had to work with. Also, we were only given 2 paintbrushes, one #4 flat and one #8 flat.” 
Being a great sport, she let me share the results with you. “It was pretty fun. However, I only followed the directions for the first 10 minutes or so before I had to go rogue and started mixing my own browns and greens. I figured no one could really see what I was doing anyway, but I forgot these things end with a group picture for some reason,” she said. As she suspected, the hardest part was not having her own brushes.

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.
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Two women painters you’ve never heard of

Drama of Fall, Constance Cochrane, c. 1940, depicts Monhegan Island.
Sandy Quang ran across two women painters this week. It’s sad how little documentation there is of their lives and work.
Helen Louise Moseley was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1883. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with Robert Henri, Hugh Breckenridge and John Christen Johansen. She regularly exhibited in the Midwest and Gloucester, MA. She died in 1928 in Boston.
Sailboats by Helen Louise Moseley.
Constance Cochrane’s life is better notated. She was born in 1882 at the US Navy Yard at Pensacola, Florida, where her father and grandfather were stationed. Motivated by her navy family, her work concentrated on the sea and shore.
Cochrane studied at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and with Elliott Daingerfield at his summer studio in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
Rocky Ocean Scene, Constance Cochrane, undated.
Cochrane was a founding member of the Philadelphia Ten, a group of Philly-based women artists. In 1921 to 1930, she purchased a summer home at Monhegan, where she painted extensively. She died in 1962.

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.
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Let’s talk about summer, part 2

Start with your pigments. 
Yesterday, it was so warm that I went outdoors in my loafers without socks. There’s still two feet of snowpack out there, but winter’s back is broken. Yes, it will snow again between now and Easter, but it can’t last.
That means that it’s time to get your plein air pack in order.
I use the same palette indoors and out, but my umbrella, my backpack, and my field easel get stashed in a corner. My first order of business is to pull them out and inspect them for cracks, tears and other damage, and to thoroughly vacuum out my backpack.

Check your brushes.
Last fall, I bought a bunch of new brushes so I’m sure that my brushes are in order. Good thing, too, since by the end of last season it felt like I was painting with clubs. Start by getting rid of brushes that are worn out or gunked up.
I buy my paints in cans from RGH Paints in Albany. I keep them in this segmented vitamin box. Generally a plastic box of paints will get me through a week of travel without reloading, and it weighs a fraction of what the same paints in tubes do. Spring is when I clean out the box, check my supplies, and order new paints for the upcoming season.

Baby wipes, bug dope, sunscreen, hooded ponch and a baseball cap are important.
More drawing means less struggling, and I carry a lot of drawing tools, both for myself and my students: charcoal, watercolor pencil, graphite, greyscale markers for fast value studies, and a viewfinder with a dry erase marker. I often use watercolor pencils and a straight edge when architecture is involved.
Don’t forget drawing tools.
I check my sunscreen, bug repellent, painting cap, apron, water bottle, and supply of liquid gloves. I always carry two ponchos—one for me, and one for my painting, because when it rains in the spring, it really rains.
I have two sets of tools, so my field ones generally don’t wander off. They still need to be checked: compass, palette knifes, scraper, bungee cords, level, S-hooks, clips, all-purpose tool, straight edge/angle finder, paint pots and soap.

S-hooks, clips and bungee cords have a thousand and one uses in the field.
It’s time to order new fast-dry mediumand check my supply of mineral spirits. Because I want to travel light, I repurpose old medium containers to hold mineral spirits, and carry my medium in a hotel shampoo bottle or cosmetic pot. I always carry a few plastic grocery bags for trash. The pins and strap are one way to carry finished paintings, if you don’t use a panel carrier. If you do use panel carriers, check the elastics to see if they need replacement. And it’s definitely time to check your inventory of painting boards.

You’ll need wee jars for medium and solvent. Don’t forget to check your stash of boards.
Last, I check my supply of frames and framing tools. If you do plein air events, you need them on hand.
Check your pigments, check your tools, check the stuff you need to be comfortable. Reorder what’s used up, repair what’s broken.
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.