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Category: workshop

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A tonic after two days of Dead Baby Art

The Lord Is My Shepherd, Eastman Johnson, 1863
Yesterday Jane Bartlett sent thisto serve as a tonic for the two days I spent thinking about what she called Dead Baby Art. Another artist, Kristine Greenizen, calls it Damien HirstSteak Spectacular: spectacle that has little about the craft and thought of art in it.
To our modern eyes, The Lord is My Shepherd looks quaint, but it was painted in 1863, shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. There were roughly 4 million enslaved blacks in America, and by no means was emancipation assured.
A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves,  Eastman Johnson, c. 1862
“This painting is a statement, a teachable moment, and even harsh in its own way, but an expression that does not arrive before the work of art does,” Jane wrote. The message has not been divorced from the medium itself.
Johnson accords this young black man the dignity of assuming he can read and understand Scripture. Of course, you think, but that was by no means the universal opinion in 1863. The assumption that a black person could and should direct his own spiritual life was a politically- and religiously-charged issue at the time.
 Portrait of an Old Man in an Armchair, Rembrandt van Rijn, 1654
The painting appears dark to our modern eyes, but Johnson is deliberately modeling his technique after Rembrandt. Rembrandt did not always enjoy the cult-like status we accord him today. He was rediscovered in the 19th century by French intellectuals who saw in him a champion of realism (most notably, the poet Charles Baudelaire).
Johnson is classified today as a “genre painter” for his depictions of slave life. It would be more accurate to call him social realist in the tradition of the Barbizon painters before him and the Ashcan School who would follow. By using a technique he associated with social realism, he is making the political nature of his work perfectly clear. That we no longer see his paintings as revolutionary is a testimony to his (and other artists’) polemical skills: they have thoroughly converted us to their viewpoint.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Two books I keep recommending that people buy, over and over


Trouble is, I never remember their titles when I’m asked. 

The first is Kevin Macpherson’s Landscape Painting Inside & Out, which is a nice introduction to plein air painting by an extremely competent teacher and painter. If you like this book, you might also try his Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light &Color.
I was teaching in a small town in New Mexico when the dusty little square suddenly filled with painting students and their teacher, Kevin Macpherson. To me, that was the equivalent of a provincial singer suddenly confronted by Maria Callas, and I was quite unnerved. But he was extremely gracious.

The second book is The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson by David Silcox. If you want to understand the northern landscape, you must study the Group of Seven. However, painters from any region can benefit from studying how they paint into traps, see landscape mosaics, and use stylish design. And their ideology—the power of the Great White North—ain’t bad, either.
Daughter getting married in two days! Hanging on by a thread.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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That mysterious synergy between artists

Pokeweed and ferns set off those florist flowers.
When the creative process is working well between two people, there’s what a friend calls “flow.” Solutions seem to flow naturally into the openings created by problems.
Jennifer Jones makes smashing statement jewelry out of repurposed buttons, gems, earrings, brooches (and the occasional tiny hot sauce bottle). She spends most of her days arranging enamel flowers; who better than to help me arrange fresh ones for my kid’s wedding on Saturday?
Jennifer Jones, hard at work arranging baskets.
We chose the flower colors weeks ago (with the bride’s connivance, of course) and were quite smug about them. And they worked fine in the bouquets. But when we got to the flowers for the church, they were, frankly, boring.
Jennifer stood back, eyeballing her creation, and asked, “You got any pokeweed in your back garden?” The chances of someone deliberately leaving pokeweed in one of our highly-manicured, postage-stamp gardens are nil. But I’ve kept one for two years, ever since costume clothier Gail Kellogg Hope and I had a chat about its dyeing properties.
The florist flowers. Yes, that’s goldenrod in the back, and yes, I paid actual money for it (since it’s already passed here in WNY).
Pokeweed has flashy bright-pink stems, large lance-shaped leaves and grape-like clusters of dark purple berries. (Evidently it is used in folk medicine and food in some cultures, but since it also contains plant toxins, I steer clear of it as a food source.)
I went out with a flashlight and clipped several stems of pokeweed and a few ferns, which are now turning gold. The result was far better than anything I could have expected from the florist blooms alone.
My cousins run a fantastic flower shop called Flowerflower. They specialize in using native plants, but since they’re in Australia, that tends to run to crazy-looking banksias and other things suited to their topsy-turvy continent. Yet somehow the pokeweed seems just as exotic, even though it’s as common as dirt in American farmyards.
The final count—27 vases, two baskets, seven bouquets, four corsages, 11 boutonnieres. Oh, and there will be no painting class on Saturday! â˜ș

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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It was a gorgeous summer in Rochester, too


Clouds over Barben Farm in Honeoye Falls.
This week, I’m taking a look back at my summer, both in Maine and in Rochester. 
Catherine, Sandy and Carol at Powder Mills Park in Pittsford.
We often light on a place here in Rochester and paint there through a season, but this year we were gypsies.
Perhaps the nicest thing about this summer was the opportunity to work with so many new artists. In particular, I loved the challenge of starting to teach Amy Vail to draw.
The weather in Rochester seemed to be perfect more often than not—clear and bright, and never too hot. We would head for shelters on the threat of rain, but it usually didn’t materialize.

There are many good options at Schoen Place. This one provides some cover.

Another option at Schoen Place is looking north over one of Pittsford’s remaining working farms.

Isabelle Ekeze watercoloring at High Falls.

Sam Horowitz paints to an audience during the Lilac Festival.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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And the things that we ate!

My personal favorite will always be codfish, here served with polenta with kale. But it’s equally likely to be grassfed beef, or a curry, or chicken stew.
This week, I’m taking a look back at my summer, both in Maine and in Rochester. 

Fresh greens with nasturtium blossoms.
When I arrived at Lakewatch Manor at close to midnight last Saturday, there was home-made hummus and bagel chips with za’atar waiting for me.  And I left after a predawn breakfast of fish and organic spinach. The innkeepers are food revolutionaries of a kind that Maine seems to specialize in. 
But others might prefer Apple Cider Doughnuts from the Willow Bake Shoppe in Rockland. Baked, not fried.
They believe in sustainable practices and healthy, organically-produced foods, they practice permaculture, and they buy local. That might mean buying grassfed meats from Sap Bush Hollow farms in Schoharie County, New York, or seafood from Sea Hag Seafood in Tennant’s Harbor, ME, whose founder just received an entrepreneurial award.
Or organic thick rolled oats with ground flax with fresh berries. Oh, where did I put my flourless chocolate torte photo?
In fact, they’ve so changed my thinking that I’ve been musing about making my next house one where I can keep chickens.
Our lunches were always delicious! Since my usual on-the-road lunch is a Clif bar, this was definitely several steps up.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Oh, the places we went!

Rocks off Port Clyde.
“It’s opener, out there, in the wide, open air.”
(Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss)
This week, I’m taking a look back at my summer, both in Maine and in Rochester. 
There are more places to paint in the Rockland area than we can ever explore in a single week, but here are a few of the ones we visited.
Painting among the trees. (Photo courtesy of Christine Haley)

Beautiful Camden harbor, with its fleet of schooners.

Chickens on Monhegan. (Photo courtesy of Nancy Woogen)

Owl’s Head view.

Tennant’s Harbor view.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Magic Carpet Ride

Lacey autumn shadows at Highland Park in Rochester.
I am back in Maine and left you a week’s worth of posts, except that yesterday was too wonderful in Rochester to ignore—about 70° F, still air, lovely sky, and good friends.  So why not share our perfect autumn weather so you can enjoy it vicariously along with us?
Virginia draws Lyn painting the Conservatory.
A tropical bougainvillea sneaks its way out of the Conservatory window. It’ll be pulling that finger back inside soon enough!
Rumor has it that it will continue all week, at least here in Rockland. The Northeast in autumn means cool nights, warm days, clear skies, and leaves that crackle underfoot and powerfully scent the air. We’re at the height of fall foliage, so if you can somehow catch a magic carpet ride to Maine and join us for this week of painting, you will not be disappointed.
Carol Thiel painting in the shade.
It was a gorgeous sunrise, there is a clearing sky, and I am off to organize my car and welcome our guests. Blessings! Peace!
Carol drawing in the shade. The power of modern graphics–she reminds me of the start-up screen on my Kindle.

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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Appropriation Art

This is classic appropriation art—pirated images, pirated music, slapped together, and politically-motivated. Furthermore, it wasn’t actually assembled by me, and I don’t plan to pay the intern who did the video. In the spirit of the age, he works for food.


One more workshop left this year, and it starts next Sunday! Join me 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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Ruining our schools, failing our children

In the Studio, by Marie Bashkirtseff , 1881
Thomas Sudhof, who shares this year’s Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology, told The Lancet in August 2010 that he owes his powers of analysis and concentration to studying a musical instrument.
“Who was your most influential teacher, and why?” he was asked.
“My bassoon teacher, Herbert Tauscher, who taught me that the only way to do something right is to practice and listen and practice and listen, hours, and hours, and hours,” he responded.
I mention this (which I read here) because I’ve been ruminating this week on a disturbing reportin the Wall Street Journal that, while U.S. baby boomers held their own against workers’ skills in other countries, younger people are lagging behind their foreign peers.
“The study, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, tested 166,000 people ages 16 to 65 and found that Americans ranked 16 out of 23 industrialized countries in literacy and 21 out of 23 in numeracy. Both those tests have been given periodically and while U.S. results have held steady for literacy, they have dropped for numeracy. In a new test of ‘problem solving in technology rich environments,’ the U.S. ranked 17 out of 19.”
That’s impressively bad, considering that we are the world’s biggest spenders on education.
Is it coincidence that our educational system has been deteriorating ever since we started centralizing it? The boomers who hold their own against their foreign peers, by and large, went to local schools. These answered to a local Board of Education who in turn answered to their local communities.
Now—as teachers, parents and students will tell you—there is no flexibility whatsoever in the system, because administrators answer to central planners. Success is defined as meeting bureaucratic expectations.
In such a worldview, the arts exist only for “enrichment.” They are always the first area trimmed when the pressure is on.
This happens even when all the evidence shows that the arts succeed. Consider the fate of Rochester’s School of the Arts (SOTA). By far the best school in a failing district, it had a graduation rate comparable to the best suburban districts. But when Rochester’s school budget was in trouble in 2009, the first response was to cut more than half of SOTA’s art teachers.
Intellectual gavage isn’t how the human brain functions best, and we clearly have lost something by teaching in this way. If there is such a thing as American exceptionalism, it derived from American creativity. Yes, we need scientists and engineers and Nobel prize-winners, but maybe we’d have more of them if we concentrated more on bassoon playing.

One more workshop left this year, and it starts next Sunday! Join me 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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Self-Driving Cars and other good design

a guest post by Sandy Quang

1968 Jean-Pierre-Ponthieu concept-car of the future. Some ideas just never get the respect they deserve.
Inspired by a short conversation about self-driving cars this weekend, I decided they would be a wonderful thing to investigate. Imagine what a car that didn’t have to dedicate a quarter of its internal real estate to navigation would look like.
Would the shape of a self-driving car even stay the same?
The most well-known examples are Google’s self-driving cars, powered by software called Google Chauffeur. As with any newly-designed product, driverless cars are bug-prone and still need lots of testing. But the appeal of this idea is not only functional, but aesthetic.
Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Car, 1933.
In the early twentieth century, a famous American designer, Henry Dreyfuss, embraced the Streamline aesthetic, improving the look and feel of American transportation and consumer products. Dreyfuss pioneered the full-sized plasticine car model.
A BMW prototype carved in industrial plasticine. How much nicer if they were made of chocolate.

The process of designing cars themselves itself, for people who love to create, is an art itself and can often be overlooked. If you depart from the ideas of what current cars look like, the possibilities are amazing. 
One more workshop left this year, and it starts a week from today! Join me or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!