Category: Plein Air Painting

Maine Inspiration – Last Year Monhegan Island

What Will This Summer Bring?

Monhegan Island, if you’ve ever heard of it, either you are from Maine or have some connection to the art world. It’s a small rustic island, 12 miles  off the coast of Maine with a population of 70. I’m not quite sure when I first learned of it’s existence but I knew it was a place where artists have been going for more than 100 years. It could have been through Robert Henri’s book “The Art Spirit”, which took up permanent residency on my night stand probably ten years ago. It’s a series of lectures Henri gave to his art students making it an easy book to just pick up from time to time to read excerpts. Henri first went to Monhegan in the summer 1902. He was so taken with the place he bought land there. Eventually he brought more artists there, his students Rockwell Kent, George Bellows, and Edward Hopper among others. The Wyeths also spent time on Monhegan. So wherever or whenever I first learned of Monhegan Island, one thing was certain, I desperately wanted to go there.

  • Houses
  • Path to the Sea
  • Monhegan Garden
  • Laundry Day

Last summer, it was my turn to be inspired. There’s a rugged beauty there, and a purity. I’m not the first to say it, and I’m surely not going to be the last but there’s something to paint everywhere you turn.  I did a few Plein air sketches while we were there and I’ve worked from those and my photographs ever since. Inspiration is a fine thing and it can push you to do your best work. The magic of Monhegan has taken me to a new place. It is humbling to know that some of America’s greatest artists have painted in the same place. 

Homer’s World, Oil on canvas, 24″ x 36″

Monhegan Island isn’t the only place in Maine where artists have been drawn. There are more places I want to go this summer as the time approaches to make the trek back north. Edward Hopper was a frequent visitor to several places along Maine’s coast. Some I’ve been to while others remain on “the list”. Two years ago I visited Winslow Homer’s summer home. The view from his front yard was incredible. Waves crashing against rocks just grabs a person and says in clear and unambiguous terms, mother nature is a powerful force. It’s constant, powerful and mesmerizing.

Perhaps a list of places to get to would be in order before we head back. Regardless of where this summer takes us, these are my Maine paintings for the past year. 

My Retro

2003

No matter what we do in life we should always strive to do better. Being better human beings would be the most important place to work on ourselves. Putting that aside, for the time being, I am trying to push through to another level in my painting.  It takes time, patience and work. I do get discouraged. Every artist will tell you about the voices in their heads (no I haven’t lost it – not yet) that aid in that discouragement. I am persistent or perhaps just stubborn, so I push those negative thoughts aside and I press on.

Sometimes the best way to overcome doubt is to trace where you’ve been and see how far you’ve come. That’s where I’m going with this posting. It started with reorganizing my websites. With everything wiped out from my old site and starting over, I’m faced with a question of what paintings to post. At this juncture I’m going to go with a less is more idea. Before I do that I’m thinking a little retrospection is in order. I’ve posted two portfolios, one of watercolor paintings and one of oil paintings. I’ve selected one painting from each year that I’ve been painting as a full-time effort. That would stretch across fifteen years, but who’s counting.

2018

Currently, I spend a great deal more time developing my paintings. Because of that, I don’t have nearly as many pieces in my current portfolio. It’s not a race though, is it? For quite some time I have felt as though I needed to catch up on lost time. My age is probably showing through when I say that I realize that I don’t need to rush or “play catch-up”. I just need to work on making better paintings. That’s what I intend to do. Looking back on where I came from, I think I’m doing just fine in the sense that I have improved. We are all perpetual students and as long as I see progress, I will continue to push on.

You can see my timeline of oil paintings by following this link.   My timeline of watercolor paintings is at this link.

Now You See It – Now You Don’t

 

We left Seattle in the morning and headed for Mount Rainier. It really is a stunning sight, seeing the snow capped peak dominate the landscape as you get closer to it. The combination of blue skies, wildflowers, greens of summer at the lower elevations and that massive dome of rock and snow was breathtaking. Mountains seem to have their own personalities, determined by the profile and the weather they generate, or otherwise effect. I would suspect that mountain climbers feel the same way but with different criteria for determining how they describe an given peak. As a painter, it’s important to get the features right, just as you would with a portrait. But with the peaks at high elevations there is the constantly changing light as clouds come and go with such frequency you’d swear that within the blink of an eye the whole landscape changed. Such was the case in Paradise, Washington where we spent the night. One minute a clear view and the next it’s gone, hiding behind a veil of clouds like a shy child.


After a short hike at Patriarch of the Groves, after we entered Mount Rainier National Park, with it’s enormous Western Red Cedar trees and a picnic lunch we set off for Paradise. As we drove higher and higher the temperatures cooled and there was more and ore snow on the ground. The game of hide and seek with the clouds and the mountain tops had begun. While the day had started out somewhat overcast it had cleared for a while, but late afternoon brought on a mix of things, seemingly every few minutes. While enjoying our dinner in the dining room of the Paradise Inn we went from spectacular views all around the walls of windows, to thick white fog that made the mountains disappear, and back again to clear skies. My plan was to get up early and paint. There were wonderful spots right outside the building so I didn’t have to carry my gear very far. However, with the vanishing act the mountains played during dinner I was just keeping my fingers crossed there would be something to paint in the morning.


When I first awoke, I looked out the window and saw clouds. I went back to bed, it still being quite early and wondered if it would be clearing. An hour later I got up, took another look and saw blue sky – with that I threw on my paint clothes and went work. Even with thermal and fleece it was a bit chilly. Standing still in the shade didn’t help either, but it’s about the best view, not your comfort level. When I had completed enough so that finishing in the studio could be easily done from memory, and or improved upon by lessons learned by years of painting, I started packing up my gear. Halfway though packing up I look back up at the peak, it seems the mountain was all done too as I watched a thin cloud slide over the vista I had just been painting. Seems time was up for my model as well.

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