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Category: Tricky Mary

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Monday Morning Art School: Stayin’ Alive

It’s the most dangerous time of the year.

Take a boat. They’re objectively safer. Tricky Mary in a pea-soup fog, by Carol L. Douglas, courtesy Camden Falls Gallery.

According to the people who measure these things, the most dangerous form of transportation is your family car. There are two seasons when highway accidents jump—summertime and the holidays. Surprisingly, Massholes and New Yorkers are better drivers than Mainers.

Why am I harping on this? I opened the holiday season with a car accident. This weekend I came too close to being sideswiped by an aggressive driver. You can’t take my workshops if I’m dead, so listen up.
The empty road, in Yukon Territory or eastern Alaska. The risk changes from distracted drivers to enormous animals.
Pay attention
You will be more distracted during the holidays. That seems obvious, but is it objectively true? Yes, and there’s an app for that. It’s from a company called TrueMotion.
They say we’re 33% more likely to drive distracted in the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. And that means we’re:
  • 12.2 times more likely to crash from dialing a phone.
  • 6.1 times more likely to crash from texting.
  • 2.2 times more likely to crash while talking on the phone.

The adjustor who looked at my car added another distraction: fiddling with the radio or heat. The controls in new cars are too big and complicated to adjust at a glance.
Set it and forget it
Like most of you, I used my phone to navigate, so it’s not practical to throw it in the backseat. But I’ve trained myself to ignore it. If I’m alone, I location-shareto the person waiting for me. That way I don’t need to tell them how late I’m running. (They can buy that golden pineapple at TJ Maxx without my opinion.)
Driving while drowsy
I think it’s absurd to tell American adults to get more sleep. Most can’t. But the devilish thing about micro-sleeps—which is what happens when you’re wrung out—is that we don’t even know they’re happening until we’ve lost control and crashed. I have many years of experience managing long drives. I drink coffee in moderation, drink as much water as I can stand, and I sing. Listening to music is soporific, but singing wakes up your whole body. And I’m not averse to stopping and napping or even sleeping in my car rather than pushing through.
Life in the breakdown lane.
Don’t drive drunk or high
Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But people still do it; in fact, drunk driving is what caused Maine drivers to fail so dismally in the rankings above.
I drink and drive, but never at the same time.
A University of California at San Diego study found a driver with a blood-alcohol level of only 0.01 is 46% more likely to be found at fault for a car accident than a sober driver involved in a crash. There’s no such thing as a safe level of alcohol consumption before driving a car. Although we haven’t devised ways of measuring, I’m pretty sure that’s true for pot, too.
Stop being so self-centered
You’ve got no business climbing up my tailpipe. Frankly, I resent it. Yes, you might be able to intimidate timid drivers into speeding up, but not me, Bucko.
Meanwhile, there’s some damn fool potting along in the left lane at exactly 66 mph. He steadfastly ignores the line of traffic behind and the angry drivers swerving around him. He owns that left lane and has no plans to vacate.
Wait! Are we really using two-ton battering rams to vent our personal problems? Can’t we all save that for Christmas dinner?
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Showing Alison the ropes

And in Camden harbor, there are ropes everywhere.
Pea Soup, by Carol L. Douglas

This week is the Camden Classics Cup, which draws all sorts of lovely boats to Camden, Maine (as if the place had any shortage on its own). Howard Gallagher asked artists from Camden Falls Gallery to scamper down to the harbor to paint the beautiful beasties, which I’ll be doing while dodging raindrops. It’s nice to do an event close to home, although it doesn’t happen often.

Alison Menke was up at Castine Plein Airlast week. We’d met in June, when we did the Parrsboro International Plein Air Festival in Nova Scotia. She went from there to take first place at Telluride Plein Air, and then bounced back up to Maine. I’m a fan of her bravura brushwork, but she’s also a lovely person. When I realized she was hanging around the Maine coast, I invited her to join me in Camden.
Alison and me, in the murk of a foggy day.
I’ve grown accustomed to the wealth of schooners in the harbor. It was enlightening to see them through fresh eyes. We set up on a floating dock to paint the bow of the Mistress, with Mercantile in the background. Mistress’ dinghy, Tricky Mary, hangs half-suspended from her bow. It’s a nice, odd angle. She’s neither floating nor swinging.
The first time I ever painted in Camden, I was shy about setting up on a floating dock. Still, it’s the only place to paint in places where tides run high. Otherwise, you’ll inevitably get a twist in the hull as the angle changes. Steve Pixley, Camden’s harbormaster, reassured me that it was alright, and I’ve been painting on the docks ever since. This is one of the many ways in which Maine is not like other places.
Our paintings before the little yawl pulled in.
Alison was overly impressed by my knowledge of the schooners’ habits. It’s really just a question of asking the crews endless questions, something that’s going to result in my being pitched in the water one of these days. The most important of these is always, “When are you going back out?”
I love the cluster of day-trippers on the wall—Appledore, Olad, and Surprise—but it’s difficult to paint them live, since they’re never in one place long enough. However, in such heavy fog, they make fewer trips.
A FitzHugh Lane Day at Camden, Carol L. Douglas. There are boats you can only catchon foggy days.
“It’s a real pea-souper,” said a couple coming in from Isleboro to do their weekly shopping. With so many visitors and exotic yachts, it’s easy to forget that for many people, Camden is a working harbor.
By midafternoon, we both needed coffee and lunch. We downed brushes and walked up to town. In retrospect, I feel badly about my choice of dining establishments. Alison has been enjoying such Maine delicacies as Nutella crepes, blueberries and lobster rolls, and I directed her to a boring old chicken salad and a Tootsie Roll. I should have taken her to Harbor Dogs instead. That’s fine coastal dining.
It draws visitors from around the world, so Camden harbor is never boring.

We sat on a bench enjoying the sea mist and our lunches when we noticed a little yawl coming in. She tied up right next to our easels and blocked our view. Pretty enough, but at that moment, I hated her. Alison decided she was finished and packed up to head to Port Clyde. I reworked the bottom of my canvas, ruthlessly excising the mizzen mast.


 â€śI’ll see you around someplace,” Alison said. Well, actually, she’ll see me in three weeks at Adirondack Plein Air. I’m looking forward to it.
I’ve got one more workshop available this summer. Join me for Sea and Sky at Schoodic, August 5-10. We’re strictly limited to twelve, but there are still seats open.