Things they don’t teach you in art school

This is as far as the Eco-Warrior can go. From here, it's on foot with a flashlight.

I learned a new word this week: dépaysement, which is that sense of disorientation one has on arriving in a strange place. It’s the perfect description of my initial shock at living in this cabin. As I’ve developed routines and some sense of familiarity, it’s gotten easier.

My bathtub, which I shared with a chorus of indignant bullfrogs.

I just finished my last night alone here. (I’m returning for one night at the end of my workshop, but I will have Sandy with me.) In the end, the things that I expected to bother me didn’t, and some things I never thought of at all proved very irritating. For example, I hate washing dishes without copious hot running water, but yesterday I succeeded at taking a sponge bath with a quart of cold water. 

This is a stovetop oven; it's a neat little device that replaces the toaster oven or microwave in the on-the-grid kitchen. Working in the dark is a fact of off-the grid living. 

Being alone doesn’t bother me but walking alone up a dark path at night makes me very jumpy. I read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood at an impressionable age and can never quite shake my fear of two-legged predators in the silent countryside. Last week, my sleep was interrupted by a serenading coyote who was close enough that I could hear the thrum of his vocal cords. I decided to discourage him by sprinkling human urine in a large circle around my cabin. He hasn’t been back.

There are, of course, many consolations, including the incredible beauty of the landscape.

I would not describe myself as a girly-girl, but three weeks without the luxuries of 21^st century grooming have left me feeling pretty disreputable. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to neatly shave one’s legs without running water. And walking in sandals on dirt paths grinds one’s pedicure away in no time.

Beans and eggs to the right, boiling drinking water to the left. It's a propane stove hooked up to a standard gas grill tank. Without it, life would have been unbearable.

The fifteen bucks I spent on my portable toilet seat turned out to be my best investment. It is neater than using an outhouse, as long as one is diligent at burying waste, and the mosquitoes aren’t too bad if you go out to do that at first light.

My biggest difficulty has been in drinking enough water. I either need to boil it or carry it in, and I never seem to have enough time for the former or enough memory for the latter.

The off-the-grid coffee grinder. Really.

The darkness here is a force that presses against one’s consciousness, particularly in the deep woods. I love the beauty of the night sky, and the darkness feels friendly to me, but for many people, that much darkness is a problem. In winter in Maine, the sun sets in mid-afternoon. Then darkness will be an ever-present friend. In fact, for all the reasons that camping is more difficult in winter, living off the grid will be more difficult then, too.

The off-the-grid shoe-drying rack.

I have long been fascinated with the Tiny House movement, perhaps because I feel I’m saddled with too much house and too much stuff for this phase in our life. I find myself constantly bumping up against the lack of workspace in this 12X16 cabin. Put two people in here and it would be impossibly claustrophobic. Perhaps the people who thrive in Tiny Houses have no avocations except living in Tiny Houses, for my studio and my husband’s guitars alone would fill one up.

I think I could live like this if I had to, but having no sense of moral imperative to do so, I’ll be very happy to return to the interconnectedness of on-the-grid living.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME starts today! Message me if you want information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Last day painting at Camden

At Rest, available through Camden Falls Gallery.

Once again, I asked Harbormaster Steve Pixley for suggestions. Instead of just giving me ideas, he gave me a lift out to a floating dock, from which I painted the transoms of two lovely boats. Seeing clouds moving in, and knowing that there were thunderstorms predicted, I moved my operation back to the quay in midafternoon.

Even if I didn’t like the painting I did (and I do) I’m keenly aware of how blessed I am to be able to spend the day on a finger dock in Camden harbor, surrounded by beautiful boats.

A nice man put up a sun shade for me.

Alas, I wasn’t quite as quick on my feet as I was the day before, and my kit and I both got a good dousing. I found an overhang under which to shelter, and used a hand-dryer in the ladies’ room to blow the water off my wet canvas. (It worked perfectly.)

I met a newlywed couple from Dallas also dodging raindrops. They were bundled up and shivering; I was in a sleeveless shirt grousing at the rain. We are all acclimated to the climates in which we live.

The end of yesterday's rain. I loved watching it pocking the water surface.

This evening from 5-7, you can stop by Camden Falls Gallery to see the opening of Camden Plein Air, featuring the work of more than a dozen gallery-represented artists. We’ve been infesting the streets and harbor for the past week or so. Our work is many and varied, and I can’t wait to see it all together.

In addition to my work, there are paintings by Todd Bonita, Lee Boynton, Jonathan McPhillips, Michael Vermette, and others.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Serendipity

Clouds massing over Curtis Island, 12X9, oil on canvas, $395, Camden Falls Gallery.

The Curtis Island overlook is a lovely spot from which one can not only see the Curtis Island light, but can also look back toward Camden Harbor and Mount Battie.

I started painting there in late morning at low tide. The water was a lovely turquoise color one might think was impossible this far north. As I worked, I began to see pink clouds massing to the north. I recognized these clouds; they mass over Lake Ontario at times. When they’re barely distinguishable from the violet haze on the horizon, they tend to presage a thunderstorm.

Waiting out the thunderboomers.

I was just sliding the work into its frame when the first fat drops hit. I can kinda-sorta paint in rain, but I cannot frame in rain, so I moved my tools back to the Eco-Warrior and headed down to the Public Landing. Although the two spots are at most a quarter of a mile apart, it wasn’t raining in downtown Camden. I was able to get the work framed and delivered.

At which point the skies opened up. It is nice to know that I can read the weather in Camden the same way as I read it in Rochester.

Working Boats, 8X6, sold.

I decided to sit in my car and sketch two working boats on the floating docks. When the rain let up to a fine drizzle, I set up to paint. It was very quiet because of the weather; the only people around me were a photographer who wanted to take shots of my palette (it happens) and a couple waiting out the rain in a car behind me.

They’re taking that painting home with them. She loved watching the work progress from a sketch to a finished product. I love that it will always remind them of a day at Camden harbor.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Up with the chickens

Lazy Jack II, oil on canvasboard, sold.

Yesterday, I got up at 4:15 in order to arrive at Camden Harbor at 6 AM. The harbor was hushed, but even by that hour there were men at work on the fishermen’s dock.

Almost three hours standing on a finger dock can undo the strongest legs, since the docks rock with the slightest movement. I was feeling it by the time the Lazy Jack II moved across the harbor to take on its first passengers of the day. I gratefully moved up to the quay and finished sketching in the boat’s rigging before it left harbor. The rest was just a matter of the setting, and since I’d already sketched the boathouse’s position in place, I didn’t need the Lazy Jack for that.

Camden Crossing, 16X12, oil on canvasboard, $650, contact Camden Falls Gallery.

In the afternoon, I decided to change it up and paint a street scene. I last did this on Labor Day weekend, and the traffic was so heavy that it was difficult to see the lower stories of the buildings. Surely a Tuesday in mid-summer wouldn’t be quiteas bad, right? Wrong. But here’s where painting in all kinds of places comes in handy: all those cars I’ve painted on city streets made it easy for me to block them in even when I couldn't actually see much of them.

Getting up before the chickens is tough when you don’t have lights or running water. I found myself stumbling around in the gloaming trying to find a place to dig a hole. So this morning I’m taking it easy. I have an errand to run in Waldoboro, I need to fill my car with gas, I want to stop at Hannaford’s and when I’m done doing all those things, I’ll amble over to paint Curtis Island from Bay View Street.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

It’s complicated

Camden schooner fleet, 20X16, oil on canvasboard, $1085, contact Camden Falls Gallery.

Perhaps it’s my advanced age, but I think I’m channeling Grandma Moses this summer. (She was from Greenwich, New York, which is a tiny town near Glens Falls, so we have that Upstate thing in common.) I’m finding myself less interested in modeling with value and brushwork and more and more interested in creating complex patterns of flat color.

Luckily, I got it mostly painted before the boats started to leave on me.

Yesterday I was up at the crack of dawn so I could paint the schooner fleet at Camden. Even by my standards, this painting got awfully complicated, particularly when the fleet started to go out, one by one.

The kayak students went by so many times the instructor asked me if I'd included them in my painting.

But it all worked out just fine—I’d drafted the hulls first, so it was just a question of filling in the rigging. Today, I’m in search of the Lazy Jack II, and since I know it goes out at 9:45 AM, I’m going to try to get to Camden by 5:30. Which is why I’m keeping this brief.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Relationship

Red Truck at the Lumberyard, 10X8, oil on canvasboard, sold.

Saturday, I did Waldoboro’s Paint the Town with a student. It was his first plein air event and his painting sold. “The true gift of the evening was the buyer telling a story about how much it reminded her of a very special time with her mom,” his wife said.

I have sold seven paintings in the last six days. That’s enough to establish some kind of idea about what sells. And what sells is relationship—painting which are universal enough to capture the imagination, but specific enough to evoke a response. A painting can be technically perfect but anodyne and unmoving.

The Three Graces, 10X8, oil on canvasboard, $300, available through Camden Falls Gallery.

Of course, a painter can’t predict what will be meaningful for his audience. All he can do is paint his own feelings and reality.

On Friday, I painted some of the amazing wooden boats that were in Camden Harbor for the Camden feeder of the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta. To paint sailboats from the deck of another boat has been a lifelong dream of mine, so I was ecstatic. And then it got better. Howard Gallagher, owner of Camden Falls Gallery, took me out on his own boat to see the start of the race. Words cannot express how ethereally beautiful and moving it was.

Evening Reverie, 8X6, oil on canvasboard, sold.

All in all, I painted The Three Graces in a state of great happiness. I hope that comes through in my painting, and I hope that translates to something important for its future buyer.

Maine Morning, 8X10, oil on canvasboard, sold.

Camden is high-intensity and highly social. Waldoboro is small, relaxed, and raffish. I went there expecting to know nobody except Loren. So it was funny that I ran into a bunch of painters I know (Ian Bruce, Daniel Corey, Michael Vermette, and Laurie Proctor-Lefebvre) and I met a Facebook friend in real life for the first time (Becky Whight).

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.

Love stories

Waiting out the Fog, oil on canvasboard, 12X9, sold

A few days ago, I sold a painting to a couple about to be married. They were enjoying a quiet day at Pendleton Point in Islesboro, and the bride wanted the painting to as a remembrance of the day.

Some incredible boats assembling in Camden for the Camden feeder of the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta.

Yesterday I painted in Camden, which is home to the Northeast’s largest windjammer fleet. There are even more gorgeous wooden boats than usual right now, because they are gathering from all over for the first turn of the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta. I had to remind myself that I was there to paint, not drool over their brightwork.

The public restrooms in Camden always have the most entertaining graffiti..

When having trouble choosing, ask an expert: harbormaster Steve Pixley duly recommended a ketch (which may or may not have been named Saphaedra). Several hours into my painting (top), a man stopped to chat with me and then moved on. A little while later, he came back and asked me if I would paint a similar painting of the Lazy Jack II, on which his cousin will be married in mid-August. I’ve painted the Lazy Jack II before, and I am thrilled to be asked to do it again.

Deflated, oil on canvasboard, 8X6, $150. Available. Contact Camden Falls Gallery if you're interested.

How awesome is it to be part of two different love stories in the same week?

A note for my workshop students: bring bungee cords if you plan to paint on floating docks. It's a real pain to fish an easel out of the ocean.

People come to places like Camden for the experience, and they often want to take a tiny bit of that home with them. Yes, they can buy lovely things in the shops in Camden, but a painting will remind them of a moment in Maine every time they look at it. Long after we have all passed on, that painting will still say something about a beautiful day, a time and a place.

Sorry, folks. My workshop in Belfast, ME is sold out. Message me if you want a spot on my waitlist, or information about next year’s programs. Information is available here.