Scraped Bald, 9×12 oils on canvas panel, $650. Click to purchase.

The assignment for next week’s class in a course I presently am taking asked for a painting and a short poem inspired by the painting. I decided to paint a composite of the memory and too-many-photos from the summit of Cadillac Mountain when I visited last week for the first time since I moved to Maine. Cadillac is the tallest of the ancient mountains in Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island, Maine, and is about 30 minutes from my home. Present-day Mt. Desert Island is actually the bottom of the caldera of a huge volcano from 420 million years ago. The summit road just re-opened — it is closed during the winter. The weather was threatening when I visited, the wind howling and the clouds ominous. Even so, the sweetest spring flowers were blooming in the low thickets of scrub. It was fairly magical. I actually wrote two poems, because I didn’t absorb that the instruction was to write a short poem of just 3 or 4 lines. My too-long first poem is titled “Another Painting”.

Another Painting

It hardly seems fair, living for the better part of seven decades

A full life, fully living, in places where others slave and save just to visit.

Counting forty-two years on a beach in Florida, white sands, tropical colors,

And now, today, stepping lightly to leave no trace on this Maine mountaintop,

Stepping so carefully on hard-as-steel rock-hard rock.

This pink Cadillac of a mountain requires respect.

Strong wind stinging my cheeks, freezing fingers holding my coat closed;

My windy watering eyes might have seen a blurry family of Porcupines

Waddling across a puddle below.

The corner turns for another vast view, more pink granite with gray weathering,

The fading echo of volcanic rock being scraped by glacial ice through the eons,

And now krummholz whistling over bluets and blooming blueberries,

Serviceberry, rhodora, lime-green replacing grayed sienna.

And descending, traveling through a photo calendar,

Forty-two becomes four hundred twenty, four hundred twenty million years

To realize the dream of an ideal life,

This life, another life for me, this another place, this another time, another painting.

The first, longer poem was personal, my feelings and thoughts about living in this incredibly interesting and beautiful area by intention, creating the life I want, living where I want to paint. The second, shorter poem borrows some of the phrasing but has a different theme, the passage of time.

Springtime on the Mountain

Four hundred and twenty million years later,

For the four hundred and twenty millionth time,

The cycle begins again on this pink Cadillac of mountains;

Bluets and blueberry blooms,

Shadbush and muted shadows of overcast spring light

Softening the edges of hard-as-steel rock-hard rock.

Inspirations, Winter and Spring of 2023
“Brain, Aging and Art”, Acadia Senior College, instructed by Armine Darbinyan, MD, Assistant Professor, Adj, Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Pathology, Neuropathology.
“Evolution of Thinking on the Geology of MDI from 1836 to Now”, Acadia Senior College, instructed by Duane and Ruth Braun. Ruth Braun earned her Master of Science from Johns Hopkins University. Over the years she has taught science, math, and geology courses in a variety of high schools and universities. Duane earned his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and before he retired he was the Geosciences Professor at Bloomsburg University. In addition, he also mapped the glacial deposits of a 9,000-square-mile area of northeastern Pennsylvania for the Pennsylvania Geology Survey. Together they wrote A Guide to the Geology of Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park.

Finally, it is plein air season!

The 10,000 hours rule postulates that one cannot become truly proficient at a study or skill until they have spent a lot of time at it – the “10,000 hours rule”. Now that the weather is warm here on the coast of Maine and I am comfortably able to be painting outdoors, I have 5 hours down and 9,995 to go, on my mission of learning to paint the rocky coastline.

There are winter plein air painters, but I think I might be just a fair weather painter. Much of my time outdoors this past winter in Maine, my first winter, was spent scouting out scenic locations and taking reference photos to document places I might want to paint. I probably can count that towards my 10,000 hours, since observation is key.

While I could have been using my photos as reference for painting rocks all winter, I have discovered that most of my motivation to paint comes from spending time with my actual subject rather than just using a photo of my subject. Beyond the initial attraction, it is by being present with it that I fall in love with it and want to paint the excitement I feel. Painting en plein air and drawing from life give me that direct connection to what I can only describe as the spirit of the imagery. I lose track of time and self-awareness (if the bugs are cooperating); that is when it is easier to pass into the state of consciousness where there is no separation of existence.

Last week the weather turned shirtsleeve-warm. I invited a couple of other plein air artists to paint with me at the part of Acadia National Park that is closest to my apartment, Thompson Island, the gateway to Mt. Desert Island. The painting above was painted en plein air.

The next day I went to the same location again by myself, this time trying to paint the rocks using just a palette knife. Some paintings you keep, and some paintings you scrape off and salvage the canvas, and that’s all I will say about that.

And the painting at the top of the page and at left was painted a few days later, with a rapidly rising tide requiring two relocations of my easel further up the shore. There are countless glacial erratics on Mt. Desert Island, rocks transported some distance by glacial activity 16,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. Balance Rock is of particular note because of its prominence on the shoreline. It was part of a granite rock formation some 25 miles north, quite obviously a different composition than the sandstone ledge it is balanced on.

Balance Rock, Bar Harbor, 6×12 oil, $250

On cold weather days I am practicing sketching rocks from the many photos I have taken. I’m learning to simplify, especially the myriad of surface textures.

Rocks need to be described through the planes of the surface. When painting them, I will have to be very sparing if I paint textures at all. I made the mistake of trying to paint the textures with a palette knife, last wek. After several hours and copious amounts of paint, I ended up scraping it all off, to salvage the canvas from the resulting mess. I’ll spare you that photo!

Presently I am exhibiting two works in the Acadia Senior College Members Exhibit, including the new painting above, “Shoreboats”, painted after a visit to one of the working docks I found when I first moved here last fall.

Also The Gardener, at right, was accepted into the Bangor Art Society’s juried member exhibition. The Gardener was created during the time warp at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Our world had ground to a halt with a nationwide “shutdown” and my group plein air painting activities had ceased. So my friend Serena Robison, who supplies many local retail florists from her huge garden, invited me to paint there, a welcome respite from the forced isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic. At the back you see sweet Serena, tending her garden. This is one of my most favorite paintings.

The Gardner, 11×14, $750

The pandemic made me realize how just valuable newsletters and web-based platforms can be. Last month I volunteered to help out with the local arts organization’s website here where I live in Maine, helping to create a Member Artists page and an Exhibits page for their website. I am most proud of the virtual exhibit / slide show I made after our most recent Members Exhibit, for people who were unable to see it in person: Spring, Sprang, Sprung.

Moving Forward with Plein Air

A loose-knit group of plein air painters in the area communicate largely through text threads, but being new, I am not yet very-well-known here. So I also opened a group on Facebook for plein air painters interested in joining up with each other to paint here. It is called Plein Air MDI, Blue Hill, and Region. You are welcome to view it, though it is in its incipient stages, and most painters seem to be waiting for consistently warm weather.

I look forward to sharing more with you, now that I am outdoors painting again.

Month: May 2023

A Painting and a Poem

Plein Air Season, Maine

Finally, it is plein air season!

Moving Forward with Plein Air