The Maine Experience - Part 2

I have been travelling for weeks, teaching and painting in Maine and in Canada. I've had no real access to the Internet, so my idea of keeping up with my blog in real time has just been impossible. I apologize for such a delay in posting, and now plan to get caught up and post on a regular basis again. Thanks for being patient with my travels!

Here is part two of my painting trip to Stonington Maine. It includes good info about making the most of a painting trip and I hope you find it useful.

Pacing myself on any painting trip is important. I think there is a logical rhythm to it that if adhered to will make for a successful time. I used to go on painting trips and try to paint EVERYTHING. Then after a few days, I was exhausted and would find later that I could have done better if I had slowed down the pace and had spent the time to think more about my subject matter. In the book, A Sense of Place: The Artist And The American Land, by Alan Gussow, there are wonderful essays that explore the complex relationship between the artist and the landscape. I highly recommend this book as a way to understand how important it is to connect with whatever it is you are painting.

Here is a link.  http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Place-Artist-American-Land/dp/1559635681

For me on this trip to Deer Isle, I arrived late on a Monday night after an 8 hour drive. I had six full days to get work done. I had to talk to myself and resist the urge to jump out of bed that first morning and attempt to  try and paint everything and anything under the sun. I have learned to pay particular attention to spending some time just looking and thinking before diving into painting. Armed with a decent digital camera and a sketch book, I like to rise early and spend time photographing and making thumbnail drawings of what I am seeing. It is all part of becoming familiar with a place. Doing this, I get a sense in this particular case about how really big this harbor is and how many boats are always coming and going. I learn that the lobster boats head out about 4:30 A.M. and start returning to unload their catch around 11:30 A.M. This goes on all day until around 5 or 6 P.M. Lobster boats return and unload at 4 different docks. As the day goes on, it becomes a real dance. One boat comes in, while several others weave and bob while waiting their turn and so on. After they unload, the lobstermen head back to their mooring spot to tie up their boat and then come back in on their skiffs. It all becomes part of the big dance. On the docks, several men are helping to unload the catch. Here is a picture that I think will help get the point across about how dance-like this all is.

All the while, I am snapping picture after picture and making some quick drawings. I'm excited by all that I am seeing and I really can't wait to paint. All day long I have painted numerous ideas in my mind. Seeing a painting in your minds eye is half the battle and can produce some well executed paintings. I'm like a hunter/gatherer. I want to come home with some good paintings but I also want many more ideas for future paintings that can be worked on later on in the studio.

On this trip I had a weather forecast that called for an entire week of sunny weather. The tides were also in my favor and my trip was planned with the tide charts in mind. I want to paint the docks and the boats when the tide is at it's lowest or at least somewhere inbetween low and high tide. Painting at the highest tide would be of importance if my goal was to paint surf, but for this subject matter, painting it at high tide would not excite me. All week long, I had a low tide in the early morning and then again in the late afternoon or very early evening. It was picture perfect.

With that being said, let me reiterate a point here. I came home with many paintings. I came back with numerous drawings and a lot of photo references, but I mostly came back with IDEAS. Now I am looking forward to spending the time to paint a cohesive body of solid work from what I've done out there.

George Carpenter used to tell me that I should hold onto more of my outdoor work in order to make more and better work from them. Especially with the idea of going bigger. This is precisely what I am doing more and more of. I spend about half my week painting outside and the other half hunkered down in my studio.

Here are a few of the quick paintings I did on location. These images will give you an idea of the varied subject matter and the feel of Stonington Maine.

The Maine Experience - Part One

I am suddenly jolted awake by a cacophony of strange whirring sounds all around me. I fly out of bed and glance at the clock. It is 4:30 A.M. I run over to a large picture window and pull up the blind so I can see what the heck is happening. I see lights, hundreds of them. In the dark, they appear to be hovering in mid-air.

It's not what your thinking. I am in Maine and what I am experiencing first-hand is not an encounter with strange beings from another planet but the Lobstermen of Deer Isle, Stonington, heading out from the harbor for another day on the water. It's a really big harbor and from my apartment for the week I have a view that overlooks a big portion of it. I have two large picture windows, one that is a view looking southeast and one that faces more west. I am here on a painting trip and these are views that will serve me extremely well for the next 7 days. Fully awake now, I sit and I watch as the hundreds of lights move about on the dark water. Eventually they become tiny specks far out on the horizon. The engine sounds that were filling up the air are now a quiet murmur barely audible from such a great distance.

My adventure here to paint in Maine for the week was planned months ago. With a full schedule of teaching plein air workshops and most of my evenings being taken up with doing home dialysis for my wife Pam, it was agreed that I would go somewhere and get some serious painting time in by myself. I needed to recharge my batteries. Pam would schedule getting dialysis at her center and I would concentrate on painting the boats and harbor. Nx Stage home dialysis has a high burn out rate and we are both determined to keep that from happening.

Just trying to make this trip a go, was an experience all by itself. Hurricane Irene was scheduled to arrive in New England on the day I was supposed to leave for Maine! It was odd, Pam and I were working to pack me for a painting trip while at the same time preparing ourselves for what was being forecast as the worst hurricane to strike New England since the one in 1938 that came storming up the East Coast with a forward speed of more than 50 miles per hour and struck as a category 3 hurricane. This was a bit daunting, but since hurricanes are unpredictable, we kept with the plan. I knew I would not be driving up on Sunday, the day of the storm and I was able to make arrangements to get to Maine on Monday or Tuesday and stay the extra one or two days in order to make it a full week.

On the morning of Irene blowing into Connecticut, we lost power very early in the day. Irene was coming to us as a tropical storm and so far we had not seen much wind yet, but apparently enough of it so that all of Woodstock pretty much lost power early that morning. Since I had spent a great deal of time preparing for a hurricane, I now spent the morning making paintings panels for the trip and thinking about Maine.

 I like to use 359 linen from Wind River Arts and Gator Board which I buy from a local source in Connecticut called Artgrafix. I have been using a fabric adhesive from United Manufacturers Supply for more than 15 years and I love the ease at which I can prepare panels. I simply cut the gator board with a good sharp utility knife to the size panels I want and then apply glue to each panel making circular motions as it comes from the squeeze bottle.

Then I make a scrubbing motion with a worn number 10 bristle brush that I have cut down in length a bit because this makes the brush a bit stiffer and helps to move the glue around. I pay particular attention to making sure the glue gets out to the edges. Then I take my linen and I apply it to the board. I use an old wooden ruler to press down on the panel to make sure it has no ridges or bumps etc. Before I do any gluing, I cut the linen from a roll and cut each piece a bit larger in size then what it will be in the end. I give each one about a quarter of an inch extra on all sides. After I am sure the linen is attached properly to the board with the glue, I turn the panel over and cut off the little bit of excess with the utility knife. It is important to do this step before the glue dries. If you wait till after it dries, you may find a ripple on the edges of the panels. I place the freshly glued panels on a flat surface and lay a flat board over them. I put a five pound weight on top. I can make a dozen panels and just keep laying one on top of the other along with the board and the weight on top of the stack. I always make sure I have extra blades for the utility knife and I change them often. This is 'key' to making panels with ease.

Early the next morning after Irene came through, Pam was on the phone with the dialysis center making sure that they were on generator power so she could get dialysis. The center had also been concerned that they were in an area prone to flooding and had informed us before the storm that if they did flood, Pam would need to get dialysis at a different center. To avoid any problems, we had a generator all set and ready to go at our house. On that Monday morning, Pam got the okay at the center. They were operating on generator power and could dialyze her with no problems. Pam jumped out of bed and told me to get myself to Maine!

My week in Stonington was fantastic to say the least. I had glorious weather all week long and the tides were working in my favor. Low tide was at 5:21 A.M. that first morning and so I had a low tide to work with for my morning light and also a low tide for the late afternoon light. When I paint around the docks, I really don't want to be doing it at high tide. There is no satisfaction in that for me.

On my next blog, which will be posted very soon, I will include some paintings I did on that trip and I'll write more about my week in Deer Isle Maine and my thought process of how to make the most out of a painting trip like this.

'You Have To Go To Your Subject Matter'

My apologies first off, for not posting in over one months time. Some of you may remember that my wife Pam, was scheduled for a kidney transplant at the end of June. At the last minute it was postponed by doctors at Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston MA. It was a matter of their remission policy and proper procedures regarding transplants for patients with an incurable disease. Basically, we never should have gotten to within three weeks to find out this information. Pam is now working on staying in remission for another couple years at which time they will perform the surgery for her. Maybe I'll go into this in more detail in a future post, but for now let's just say that it threw us off track. We are also working on putting our house on the market, because we need to downsize and the work involved to get your house ready to sell takes up a big chunk of painting time to say the least.

Our goal is to have a smaller living space with less upkeep and a larger studio space in which we can thrive. This makes the most sense to us. We are really looking forward to it. Once you finally say goodbye to a house in your mind and 'let go', you begin the move towards a new future and that's just what we need.

George R. Carpenter  1928-2006  Painting in Jeffersonville Vermont

I titled this post 'You have To Go To Your Subject Matter' because I've been thinking about this lately and wanted to share the ideas and thoughts behind it. Years ago I met a painter in Ogunquit Maine, George Carpenter, who became a good friend and mentor. He shared many of his ideas with me. George died a few years back while painting at his easel. He had a work ethic that was quite the goal to work towards. Simply put, he was always working. When I heard the news of his passing, I was deeply saddened by the thought of losing a good friend but I found myself nodding in a kind of approval with the news that he died while at work on a painting just outside the front door of his gallery in Perkins Cove.

George would share ideas about painting along with his thoughts about what it meant to be a painter and how to go about properly being one. If he was in the mood to share, he was very generous. If he was not in the mood to share, you best be quiet and let him work. If George wanted to share his ideas with you, you were also going to hear them whether you wanted to or not. Sometimes I would find myself questioning his thinking, but nine times out of ten, I'd later come to realize that he had stated it right.

Early on, George would invite me on painting trips with him to some part of Northern Maine or Vermont with the understanding that he would share his thoughts but I was going to do all the driving. This was a fine idea by me. This kind of relationship lasted up until his passing.

'You Have To Go To Your Subject Matter', he would always say. 'It's not going to come to you'. While it's true that there are things to paint in our own back yard, he believed that painting trips to special places to find the best subject matter were both practical advice and a necessary fact for the outdoor painter. The truth of the matter is, for instance, if you desire to paint working boats and working harbors, you need to go where it's still being done. I can drive for a little over an hour from my rural home in the country and be in places where there are boats. I can paint in these places and get good paintings, but I can drive 5 hours into Maine and find things that make me absolutely drool. If I am that excited about a subject, than I have more opportunities to make my share of winning paintings. From the 'sale' side of making a living as a painter, the more excited I am about my subject, the better the chances that I will find an audience who feels my excitement for it too.

I always find that upon returning from a trip, I get more excited about painting the subject matter in my own area. It's like seeing it for the first time again after being away from it. I'm sure you will agree with me that, as painters, this should be our daily goal with whatever it is we are painting.

Pam and I just got back from teaching our annual five day workshop on Monhegan Island. This is one of those special places. We've been going there for more than 15 years and this was our 12th annual plein air workshop. Now let's face it, Monhegan has been a place of inspiration for artists, writers, poets and other creative individuals for more than one hundred years. Every nook and cranny of this beloved place has been painted time and time again by somebody, yet this tiny island keeps us coming back for more. The moment I step onto the Monhegan Dock after making the 12 mile jaunt on the ferry from from Port Clyde, I feel my stress level drop to just about non existent. I look at everything as if I've never seen it before and I get excited to be there! It's the kind of place that makes you feel like you've just arrived home. We've spent weeks on Monhegan with our six kids when they were younger and I've found just as much pleasure from hiking and  taking in the beauty and magic of it all as I do from painting it. The December 1995 edition of American Artists 'Workshop' Magazine has a 17 page spread about our Monhegan workshop. All the photos from that article were taken by our dear friend Roger Cole.

In a few weeks, I am going to make a trip 'down east' to Stonington Maine to paint the harbor and the boats. For me, this is another magical place. It's that kind of place that makes me drool just thinking about. My last trip here was with Pam and some good friends. Chuck Waldman and his wife Janet came east and this was their first introduction to Maine! Gray Park came too. Our good friend and 'health food chef extraordinaire', Ken Wojcik came and did all the cooking for us so that we could spend every moment painting. If we weren't painting or eating the really good meals we were provided, we were hauling out the guitar and banjo and having some fun playing. Ken is also a good photographer and he spent some time with his camera too.

I'm going to be solo on this particular trip because I feel a great need to isolate myself and get work done. I'm bringing nothing but 11x14's with me. Lot's of them. I will  go to bed early each night and wake up before the sunrise. I will paint in the early morning and then take a needed nap at some point around mid-day. Then I will paint again until dark. I'll bring my Gloucester Easel and my 16x20 paint box. This is exactly how it would be on painting trips back in the day with George.

Here is a painting by George Carpenter that is part of my collection. This is a view from off the highway on the way to Jeffersonville Vermont. This was painted from memory.

George pointed out this spot as we drove down the highway . He said he was going to paint it from memory and  that it would be a 'real ball buster of a painting.'