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Tag: Colin Page

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The science behind ‘don’t be boring’

Possum, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

“The limited bandwidth in our optic nerve is reserved for those things we don’t expect. We effectively only notice things that are surprising – that’s how we can compress information efficiently. It’s similar to what happens in a television. There’s an expectation value for each pixel and the data is only used to the extent that the pixel deviates from the expected level of the one that precedes it, or the one that adjoins it. So that very thing of being interestingly less wrong: there’s a complete difference between things we notice and things we perceive.“

That’s Rory Sutherland in The Spectator, and he was quoting a theory from The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality, by Andy Clark. Clark is a philosopher, not a neuroscientist, and one of his key theories—that our brains are essentially prediction machines—seems awfully simplistic to me. Nevertheless, his point about the optic nerve is backed up by science.

Toy Reindeer with double rainbow, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435 framed, includes shipping in continental US.

How your eyes work

The optic nerve has a limited number of axons, which are the things that conduct electrical impulses. That bandwidth constraint means our visual system must prioritize and condense information. 

Much of that data compression happens in the retina itself, where photoreceptor cells and ganglion cells focus on edges, contrasts, and motion. Then these signals are sent to the optic nerve. 

Our retinas filter spatially by detecting changes in luminance across different areas of the visual field. They filter temporally by detecting changes in brightness over time. If there are no changes, there’s no need to forward more data.

Hiking, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

Once that happens the brain uses context and prior knowledge to interpret what the optic nerve has sent. Much of what we ‘see’ is really a reconstruction built on what we’ve seen before. So the value of ‘don’t be boring’ is that it makes the eye and brain really look.

How Colin Page does ‘don’t be boring’

One of my favorite galleries is the Page Gallery in Camden. I’m constantly surprised by something there. This week, Lisa Renton gave Poppy Balser and me a detailed audiotour of (of all things) their Christmas tree. It combines natural plants with unnatural finishes and iridescent tinsel (which is a lot better executed on their tree than in the product photos).

Right now Colin seems to be in a rainbow sherbet phase; it’s cool, arresting, luminous, and you can’t really understand the subtle high-key balance from the online photos. Nathaniel Meyer is painting somewhere between the Canadian great Lawren Harris and fairy tales. Marc Hanson has some lovely small monotypes that say nothing and everything. Next time I go in, there will be something else that stops me cold or makes me laugh.

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

How you can do ‘don’t be boring’

I’ve written before about the importance of not being boring, but maybe it’s more accurate to say that we should strive to be innovative and surprising. That doesn’t mean awkward or badly-composed, and it certainly doesn’t excuse terrible drafting or paint handling. But with technical competence comes the freedom to think about whatever you want, rather than what others have thought about before. That means spending less time painting and more time drawing and thinking. What are you thinking about that might translate into something new and different in paint?

Speaking of drawing

I still have room in my drawing class starting right after the new year. It’s the best thing I can recommend to improve your painting in 2025. (Yeah, I’m talking to you.)

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Marine art finally escapes drydock

Brigantine Swift in Camden Harbor, 24X30, oil on canvas, framed, $3478 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

This painting benefitted from a good long spell in drydock.

I started it a few years ago on the docks at Camden harbor, for Camden on Canvas. That’s the brainchild of Colin Page, and it’s become a great venue for marine art as well as a successful fundraiser for the Camden Library. (I’m happy to say I’m in again for 2024.)

It was hot, I was parched, and for once the creak of wood and water wasn’t moving me. I threw down my brushes in disgust.

“I hate it,” I spat out as I scraped the canvas down. I almost never do that, but I was riled.

“I like it,” said Björn Runquist.

“It’s not that bad,” said Eric Jacobsen.

“What is the matter with you?” asked Ken DeWaard, who never cuts me any slack.

What’s the point of having friends if you never listen to them?

The only part I really liked was the filtered, haloed sun, but that wasn’t enough to hang a whole painting on. Still, I respect their opinions, so I didn’t use the canvas as a sail for my dinghy. Instead, it went into my giant pile of unfinished marine art. It was bigger than most of the others, so I was constantly catching it with my foot or in the corner of my eye. Gradually, it grew on me.

Its spars (the things the sails hang from) are so delicate that they look as if they couldn’t possibly survive the North Atlantic. Even worse, they looked cockeyed to me. “You’re a better draftsman than that,” I chided myself.

I almost never take reference photos, preferring to whine at my friends if I discover I need one. However, I did find a picture from the dock that day. Those spars looked just as cockeyed in the photo as they did in my painting. The only other square-rigger I know of at rest is Cutty Sark, in Greenwich, England. Her spars are perpendicular to the keel, but she’s not exactly docked; she’s more trapped, like an insect in amber.

Cutty Sark stuck in her permanent installation in Greenwich. She’s going nowhere. Photo courtesy of Ethan Doyle White/

I called my resident expert on all matters maritime, Captain John Foss. He told me that, despite the name, a square-rigger can, in fact, turn its spars. They can be angled from running straight across the vessel (‘square’), to a beam reach or even a close reach.

I learn something new every day, darn it.

Marine art is complicted

Many years ago, I was wrapping up a painting on the Camden docks when two young salts stopped to look at it.

“Should we tell her?” asked one, quietly enough that he thought I couldn’t hear.

“Nah.”

I might love painting boats, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a spot of marine art that didn’t include an error or omission. Sometimes they’re intentional, for compositional purposes. Sometimes they’re oversights, and sometimes they’re mistakes. I think this one is fine, but if not, one of my friends is sure to tell me.

I’m in Britain on another lovely, long, blister-inducing hike. I’ve turned my phone off and while I’m gone, Laura will be running the office. Just email me as usual if you have questions or problems registering for a class or workshop. (Who am I kidding? She fixes all that stuff anyway.)

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: it’s all in the preparation

The Pine Tree State, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping in continental US.

When I’m teaching workshops and classes, I frequently ask students, “What’s your takeaway lesson here?” Last week my workshop students got a deep dive into two artists’ working method: Andrew Wyeth‘s, through a guided tour of the Farnsworth Art Museum, and Colin Page‘s, from the maestro himself.

“Painting is easy,” Colin said. “It’s the preparation that’s hard.” I smiled, because that’s something I frequently say as well. Wyeth didn’t whisper it from beyond the grave, but his methodology is spelled out in the museum. For his studio paintings, he was a consummate draftsman who made many sketches and paid meticulous attention to detail.

Bracken Fern, 12X9, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Students frequently ask me how to achieve loose brushwork. My first question is why they want that, as it’s not a universal value. Rather it’s a question of style. Linear painting is based on line and boundary; the artist sees in clear shapes and outline. Painterly painting focuses on the interactions of masses, shadows, and merged shapes. An example of a contemporary linear landscape painter is Linden Frederick. An example of a contemporary painterly landscape painter is Kevin Macpherson. Neither style is ‘better,’ they’re just different. And there are many painters (including me) who work in the middle somewhere.

When Arthur Rubinstein was asked if he believed people when they told him he was the greatest pianist of the 20th century, he replied, “Not only I don’t believe them, I get very angry when I hear that, because it is absolute, sheer, horrible nonsense. There isn’t such a thing as the greatest pianist of any time. Nothing in art can be the best. It is only… different.”

What is a universal value in art is assurance, and that rests on the back of solid preparation. Rubinstein joked that he was lazy and didn’t like to practice, but he still spent 6-9 hours a day at the piano. “And a strange thing happened. I began to discover new meanings, new qualities, new possibilities in music that I have been regularly playing for more than 30 years.”

Larky Morning at Rockport Harbor, 11X14, on archival canvasboard, $869 unframed includes shipping in continental US.

The same thing is true of painting, as is its obverse-the less preparation you do, the more you’ll fumble in performance. And the more you must redraw, reposition, reset values, or restate, the less immediate and assured your brushwork will be. That’s as true in oils, acrylics and pastels as it is in watercolor.

What does that mean for the emerging artist? At a minimum, you should do a carefully-realized sketch, considered in terms of compositional patterns of darks and lights. This sketch should be moved to the canvas or paper accurately; if that requires gridding, then you should grid. Colors should be tested first for value, and then to how they relate to the overall key of the painting.

Sea Fog, Castine, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping in continental US

Yes, I know artists who don’t do these things. They can be sorted into two groups. The first are those who are very experienced. They’ve learned what corners they can cut (which are not the same for everyone). The second are impatient beginning and intermediate painters. They almost always fail in the preparation, and then they wonder why they’re flailing around in the painting stage.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Why pay for it when you can get it for free?

Autumn Farm, Evening Blues, $1449 framed.

In our impecunious youth, bar owners were notorious for offering bands the ‘opportunity’ to play for exposure (and maybe a free beer). According to my bass-player husband, it’s a practice that continues to this day. “All you need is to learn three chords and you can call yourself a blues band,” he said. “And 90% of the people in the audience won’t know the difference.”

Of course, art buyers are not usually as drunk (or rowdy) as a Saturday night crowd in Buffalo. But the basic mechanism is the same. We’re often asked to give away the very thing that is our livelihood. If we don’t, some other artist—hungry for success—will step in to do so. Since the audiences for these events are not art-centered, they often can’t tell the difference between a masterpiece and something that will look good in their bathroom.

Autumn farm, oil on canvasboard, $1449 framed.

General auctions are not to be confused with events where a non-profit organization mounts an exhibition or plein air event, such as Cape Elizabeth Land Trust’s Paint for Preservation. These are generally well-run and pay both the artists and organization.

If the organization can give an artist exposure to the kind of people who will be future art buyers, it’s not a bad business plan to occasionally give away a painting. This introduces the emerging artist to the world of selling art and helps them learn to price their work. But the value to the artist is extremely limited.

You won’t be able to deduct the value of the painting on your taxes. Artists are not entitled to take deductions on charitable donations of artwork. In fact, the IRS limitations on donating art are extremely restrictive.

Beauchamp Point, Autumn Leaves, $1449 framed

Non-profit organizations are perpetually fundraising, and general auctions are a favorite way of doing it. They assign a committee to gin up donations, and one or two people always seem to know artists. When it was my late friend Dean and the organization was Ducks Unlimited, I said sure. I like conservation and I loved Dean.

Believing in the mission of the organization isn’t enough. Often, your artwork is not a good match to the audience, so the work sells for a fraction of its value. A fisheries organization used to ask artists to paint wooden buoys for an annual fundraiser. I believe in their mission, so I participated. It was an interesting challenge, but also a lot of work. The buoys sold at such a discount I would have been far better off just writing them a check.

A Woodlot of Her Own, 9X12, $869 framed

Colin Page is doing a similar fundraiser for the AIO food pantry in Rockland. It has a much greater chance of success. Artists painted wooden bowls that are available through silent auction at the Page Gallery at 23 Bay View Street in Camden from September 3-10. Colin’s a local celebrity, the cause is critical, and—most importantly—the venue is art-centered. It’s an example of how to do this right.