Islesford Dock Gallery

Thanks to the Islesford Dock Gallery for showing my paintings this summer. Be sure to stop in to check out all the great artists featured there this year! Some new and interesting artists include Daniel Minter, an African-American artist from Georgia and John Urbain, a Belgian-American artist and poet from Detroit.

Daniel Minter: Judgment House, mixed media acrylic wood, 50x24x10"

John Urbain: Homage to Dylan Thomas, mixed media/collage on illustration board, 9x15"

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Below are some of my own that can be seen among these brilliant artists this summer.

Happy Birthday, Doug!

Our housemate, Doug turned 30 today! To honor this milestone, I made him a birthday painting of my new favorite vegetable, the Hakurei turnip. It is a vegetable he introduced to Andrew and I last fall when he moved in and planted a few things in the garden. We were delighted! Both by the arrival of this turnip, and by the arrival of Doug, who like the turnip, is sweet and tender!

Doug works managing a vegetable farm in Concord, MA on Thoreau's old farm. It is called Gaining Ground and serves to provide free vegetables to the underprivileged. Not only does he do genuinely good work in the world, he is a genuine good guy, just like Thoreau. Happy birthday, Doug!

Music Monday

School's out! Back to the easel.

After a visit to my family last weekend I ended up with this sketch of my sister, the cellist with her 4 year old fiddler friend, Finn.

Then a painting...

Finn visits Heather every Monday morning for a music jam. They play their stringed instruments and sing together. Sometimes they play the piano. What a joy to witness this as a music teacher, two lives enriching each other by sharing music. I just had to do this painting.

Also neat to compare the size of their two instruments: Finn's a 1/16 size violin an Heather's a full sized cello.

Gilley Beach, Islesford

What do you paint in March/early April when the landscape is still gray and drab?

The beach?

February: a look in the studio

Andrew and I recently returned from a wonderful visit to the desert of Yuma, AZ to visit my maternal grandparents, Dorothy and Jack. We enjoyed 4 days of catching up, sorting through old photos, grandma's home-cooking, walks and pool time in sunny 75 degree weather. Here's a photo we came across of Grammy in a veggie hat she designed:

It says: "Eat Veggies". She is so crafty!

One of the perks of being a teacher is the time off! I'm thankful for the time with family and time to paint--I spent the rest of the week after our trip in the studio.

On Thursday one of the painters at Artist Muse brought her teenage son to model for us. Most of my paintings this time of year are landscapes done from photos so I really enjoyed the chance to break away from that to paint from life. Thanks, Pam and Stefan! Here's what became of that session.

Here's a peek into what's new (and not so new) in my corner at Artist's Muse (more landscapes...)

The Art of Maine in Winter

This winter I'm embracing the cold by painting it.

Warm vs. cool colors, tight vs. loose:

I have fun mixing the different colors and shades of the snow, which is not truly white from a colorist's perspective. I certainly start with white but mix in blues, grays and purples for shadows, and sometimes yellows, oranges and pinks for the lights. The warm lights against the cool shadows create the contrasts of snow...I think I have a long way to go to achieve this however, and my phone also did not capture the colors very well.

Each winter I enjoy flipping through this book I got several years ago at Port in a Storm, a book store in Somesville, ME that closed a few years ago. It is compiled and written by Carl Little, a Mount Desert resident. It features paintings of a wide range of styles...

...including "Fox Hunt" by Winslow Homer, which my parents and I saw at the Homer exhibit in the Portland Museum of Art last month. I recommend going to the PMA just to see their collection of Homer paintings...

...also in this book is "Afternoon on the Sea, Monhegan 1907" by Rockwell Kent which I saw in 2008 at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Bold contrasts are what always draw me to his paintings, and Monhegan's dramatic landscapes must have been the ideal muse for him. An American Modernist painter, he was also a writer and printmaker, and a transcendentalist and mystic who read Emerson and Thoreau.

"I don't want petty self-expression," he wrote, "I want the elemental, infinite thing; I want to paint the rhythm of eternity."

Kent lived and painted on Monhegan Island for five years in the 1900s.

Lois Dodd, an American abstract impressionist, is a contemporary painter I admire. In fact, I admit I would like to paint more like her. She lives in NYC and visits Maine and her paintings are also featured in Little's art books. Lucky us, the PMA is currently showing a special exhibit of Dodd's paintings, up until April 7. I cannot wait to see it. Below is "Snow in Cove" (1982).

The Great Marsh in Snow

It's January at last and I'm back at school after a wonderful 2 week break, glad to leave last month behind. December is difficult. I find there's too little sunlight, too little time to get outside (let alone paint!), and too little courage to face the darkening days. This December brought a particular heaviness with the tragedies in Newtown. Each day over the past 4 weeks has haunted me with at least one thought of that awful day....but with the sadness also comes a renewed love and appreciation for life and loved ones, for my young students in particular and their great joy of life! A tragedy sometimes helps one find even more reason to teach, make music, make art: create hope.

Though January is the beginning of a cold, grey season, I celebrate the slow return of of the light this month. I'm thankful for a classroom with many windows and a workplace where I can step outside during the day and see children play. I'm thankful for the beauty of a fresh snowfall and the chance to play in it. I'm thankful for old friends who invite me out for a walk in it!

On a recent visit to the island over the holiday, my childhood friend, Emily happened to be home and called the house one morning after a storm that brought a couple inches of snow. She wanted to know if we would take a walk with her to the marsh via the Sputnick Trail, known by islanders as "Bo-bo Road" because there is a "broken-down truck" in the middle of it and that is the way it was pronounced at one time by a very young Fernald boy.

The marsh is possibly the most beautiful place on the island. The woods we walked through open out to a plane of yellow grass and heather which meets a saltwater pond separated from the ocean by a cluster of trees named "Dead Man's Island" (unsure where the name came from), which confronts the sea beneath a dramatic view of Cadillac and surrounding mountains. I painted this scene of it last weekend, hopefully the first of many of this motif.

I don't love winter, but I do love it's colors.