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Tag: Maine coast

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My love affair with schooner American Eagle

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“You have a crush on every boat,” my husband once said. Of all the boats I’ve ever loved, schooner American Eagle is at the top of the list. She’s not the only windjammer I admire, or even the only windjammer I’ve painted. But I get to teach on her every year, she’s always in perfect nick and I never have to do any of the maintenance. That’s down to Captain John Foss, who restored her impeccably, and Captain Tyler King, who’s keeping up the good work.

A quick glimpse will tell you why we had no onboard electronics on this lovely old girl. I wish I still had her but, as they say, it’s complicated.

I grew up in western New York, where my family kept a 30′ wooden sloop, first at Buffalo on Lake Erie and then at Wilson on Lake Ontario. As a kid, I figured that since the Great Lakes are smaller than the ocean, they must be safer. It’s only been since I’ve moved to the Maine coast that I’ve realized how extreme the weather in my hometown of Buffalo is. The Great Lakes are prone to unpredictable squall lines, seiches, and storm surges. Electrical storms are very common, even in winter, when they create the phenomenon known as thundersnow. Periodically, the water in Lake Ontario turns over, making a noticeable, sudden change in the temperature that results in fog. The Great Lakes have heavy freighter traffic and fog can drop in an instant. It’s less nerve-wracking now, but in my youth “onboard electronics” were limited to running lights.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

On the other hand, the Great Lakes are consistently deep. If you can get out of the harbor channel without grounding yourself on last winter’s silt, you’re unlikely to hit anything submerged. That’s different from the Maine coast, where rocks stick inconveniently out of the water, or worse, not quite out of the water. When I first sailed on schooner American Eagle, I told Captain John that the thing that gave me pause about potting around in the ocean by myself is not knowing what was on the bottom. “Lobster traps, pretty much,” he laughed. And sailors today all use depth finders, which take the sport out of holing one’s hull.

However, the weather on the Maine Coast is simply not as foul as it is on Lake Ontario. (A friend who lives in Scotland tells me that Rochester is more dreich in late fall and winter than is Edinburgh.) It rains less here, and there are fewer storms.

I see boats as powerful symbols of the human condition. We’re always either sailing into trouble or getting ourselves out of it. Breaking Storm, above, is about the latter, and I’ve got a painting of the windjammer Angelique on my easel that’s about the former. (Sorry about that, Captains Dennis and Candace!)

American Eagle rounding Owls Head, 6×8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 unframed includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

Breaking Storm is my favorite of all my schooner American Eagle paintings, but I realize it may be too large and expensive for some people. That’s why I painted American Eagle rounding Owls Head, just 6X8. It’s softer and more suggestive than the larger painting, and there’s no sense that the storm has abated.

Of course, if you sail with us in September, you can paint your own version of sailing on the Maine coast. But if you can’t go adventuring with us, a painting is every bit as wonderful.

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Nothing lasts forever

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, framed, $1594 includes shipping in continental US.

I woke up on Thursday morning to bad news. The downtown core of Port Clyde, arguably one of the most picturesque seafaring villages in Maine, had burned down. At the time of this writing, they are still sifting through the ashes.

I am a member of the Red Barn Gallery, which is just across the road. Our season has ended and we were in no danger anyway. However, I do know someone affected directly by the fire, and my heart goes out to him. Moreover, it’s going to change the commercial life of Port Clyde forever. Those beautiful frame buildings will never be rebuilt as they were.

Downtown Port Clyde in happier days, from the front door of the Red Barn Gallery.

A gallerist at the Red Barn Gallery could entertain herself for hours, sitting at the desk and watching the activity in front of the General Store. I’ve often done it, and I planned on eventually doing a painting from that window. Alas, I started with the back view first, across the water to the lobster co-op. After all, I had all the time in the world, right?

In the same news cycle, I read that the Sycamore Gap Tree in Northumberland, England, had been cut down. A 16-year-old is “in custody and assisting officers with their inquiries,” as my favorite mystery writers put it. I have a relationship with this tree, having hiked the length of Hadrian’s Wall in 2022 (my account of this ramble starts here). The sycamore was photogenic and perfect, nestled into a curve between two rising slopes. That is why it appeared in a prominent scene in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It won the 2016 England Tree of the Year award, and was a finalist for the 2017 European Tree of the Year. If the lad is the culprit, it was a spectacular example of teenage bad judgment, but nothing will bring the tree back. And I don’t even have a photograph.

Here I was painting out the back window of the gallery, when I should have been painting the front view.

On the road into Tenants Harbor there was an old-fashioned lobster pound. These are mostly obsolete; it makes more sense for lobstermen to keep their catch in lobster cars, which are slatted containers that allow sea water to rush through, usually off a floating dock.

A lobster pound was a kind of shallow corral where the lobsters wandered around until it was time for dinner-your dinner, that is. And this one was a classic, so I painted it on one grey, miserable day.

Then one day I was bumping down River Road and the lobster pound was gone. In its place rose a new building that I hear is going to be a seafood market, or something similar. I suppose over time we’ll learn to love it, but right now it’s raw and unfinished. But in this case, I’d managed to catch the old building before it was gone.

Middle and Upper Falls at Letchworth, 18X24, oil on canvas, private collection.

About twenty years ago, I painted the rail bridge over the Upper Falls at Letchworth State Park. I’d spent the summer painting there, which meant I had ample time to study the bridge. Built in 1875, it was a slender iron structure, not beautiful, and it always seemed woefully inadequate for modern rail traffic. Apparently the Norfolk Southern felt the same way, because it was finally replaced in 2017.

Sadly, we can never predict what will remain and what will be washed away by the tides of time. That includes people, because the only absolute in life is that it ends someday. Today would be a good day to reflect on how I might act in order to have no regrets when time takes away the people around me, as it inevitably will. And then I’ll shake off this mood and go paint something at Artworks for Humanity. If you’re in Waldo County, ME, stop by.

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Batten down the hatches!

The Ocean has its Eye on You, 14X18, oil on canvasboard, $1087 includes shipping and handling within continental US.

I opened McKinsey & Company’s daily email digest to read, “Resilient organizations prepare for the storms…” They were referring to metaphorical storms, but I laughed, because I’ve done nothing for the past 24 hours except prepare for what will possibly be the first hurricane to make landfall in Maine since 1969.

While I’m a dab hand at blizzards, I have no experience with hurricanes. I usually consult the Bible when faced with the unknown, but building an ark is impractical. Instead, I read the advice in our local papers and consulted my buddy Sarah, who hails from Louisiana.

My outdoor gallery doesn’t usually close this early. However, it is in a tent, and by nature not wind-proof. My husband and I wrapped and packed and toted, removed the interior display walls, and finally dropped the canvas at 8 PM on Wednesday.

Blown off my feet, 16×20, $2029 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

My arms and legs were aching. Our neighbor Paul ambled over and helped Doug move the dinghy and canoe to a spot between the garage and shed. That timely assistance was precious; I couldn’t lift another thing.

“How heavy does something have to be to stop it from being a projectile in 70 MPH winds?” my friend Linda asked. She lives in Stonington, which is more exposed than Rockport. “The big fear here is a breach of the causeway,” she added. That would effectively cut Deer Isle off from the mainland.

I’m just a few hundred feet from the ocean, but there’s heavily-wooded land between us and the sea. I’ve spent years saying we need a targeted hurricane to improve our view. The fancy houses are the ones below us, with the woods acting as a barrier between them and the hoi polloi, by which I mean me.

Deadwood, 30X40, oil on linen, $6231 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Last Christmas, my buddy Dave answered an emergency call in Owls Head. It wasn’t even a tropical storm, just a garden-variety gale. It breached the seawall, causing extensive damage to his clients’ house. Watching that unfold, I was cured of any desire to own waterfront property. We’re sitting pretty in an old farmhouse on a bluff high above the sea. Our ancestors weren’t as naive as we are. They built their fishing shacks and boat houses at the water’s edge and their homes higher up.

That doesn’t mean I can ignore the storm warnings. High winds, especially coming off the water, can cause lots of damage. We’ve had an extraordinarily wet summer which has resulted in tree stress. Squishy ground, a lot of pines and spruces with shallow roots, stressed trees and high winds-what could go wrong?

I protested at putting away the patio furniture, as September is the loveliest month of the year here. Instead, we lashed it together and put weights on it. The grill gazebo is dismantled, and all our planters are sheltering under the edge of the house. That, I think, makes us ‘shipshape and Bristol fashion.’

American Eagle rounding Owls Head, 6×8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Meanwhile, our harbormasters are asking anyone who can, to haul their boats out now. Dinghies are coming out of the water; so are floating docks. Acadia National Park will close their ring roads and campgrounds tomorrow morning.

“Pray for the best and prepare for the worst,” as they say. We’ve done our best.

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