If every plant has a toxic relative, why wouldn’t that be true for people as well?

I’ve painted the Erie Canal all over the place (this one time in Gasport, NY). How much more can it teach me, right?

The plein airinstructor has a lot more to do than simply show up and coax brilliance out of her students. She must first reconnoiter: is there a way to get equipment from a staging area to the painting site? Are there bathrooms? Even better, can you get a cup of coffee anywhere nearby?
I aim to know where every
Porta-Potty in the Northeast
is before I’m through.
It also behooves the plein air teacher to have a comprehensive knowledge of plants and trees. Not only does it help figure out when a painting site will be at its best, but it can also help avoid a disastrous encounter with, say, poison ivy.
My friend Mary has been urging me to explore the canal between Schoen Place and the Great Embankment in Pittsford. I’ve painted frequently in both places and many others on the canal besides. What could this little strip of land have that I haven’t already seen?
I found a lovely red barn against which was growing one of my favorite springtime plants, Greater Celandine (chelidonium), which is remarkable both for its lovely yellow flowers and for its many pharmacological and herbal uses. The Celandine will survive a week of rain and be there next week. But what is that lurking next to it? Not a Queen Anne’s Lace, but its toxic and invasive Giant Hogweedcousin, which causes nasty contact dermatitis.
A Giant Hogweed unfurling its leaves in the middle of a view I admire. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
And just a little further down the path sits another noxious member of the carrot family: water hemlock. It has to be ingested to kill you, but it’s the most toxic plant growing in America and nearly a dead ringer for benign Queen Anne’s Lace.
And another Queen Anne’s Lace ringer, water hemlock. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
It happens so frequently in nature: deadly wolfsbane is in the same family as harmless little buttercups. Sumacs include poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, and a whole host of benign and lovely relatives.
In a lifetime of talking people through their problems, I’ve recently concluded that having a toxic person or two in a family isn’t the exception; it’s the rule. But it wasn’t until I was walking in the woods today that I realized that this is the way we’re designed. That isn’t a solution to the problems caused by toxic relatives, but I suppose it makes them easier to bear.
A thousand greens, our canal. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
(And I must admit that the site Mary found, just east of Schoen Place, meets all my criteria and provides a unique view of the canal. Now to find a time to paint it, since it’s going to rain for the next three days.)
Whoa, Nellie! August and September are sold out at Lakewatch Manor.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

The old folks flit, the young fly home

Drawing by Kamillah Ramos, an architecture student at SUNY Buffalo
I’m always a bit shocked when my former students return from college, for every year they come home with more mature features and more adult demeanor. May is the month when seasoned students flit and youngsters fly home, at least for a little while.
The water is much clearer than last month. The train still barrels right over the falls, however.
On Saturday, I had several of them with me on the Pont de Rennes bridge. It was significantly warmer than when Carol Thiel and I painted there last month, and the water is far clearer now that we’ve passed the April freshets.
Teressa drawing. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)
If I have a theme I harp on over and over it’s the power of drawing. Drawings aren’t precious; recognizing that gives us the freedom to take chances, to screw up. The fear of failing is the most debilitating thing in the artistic process, so there’s freedom in the common #2 pencil. Drawing first allows an artist to focus on observation, making the painting phase far more fluid.
It was windy again Saturday, hence the water-bottle counterweight. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)
So it wasn’t exactly a surprise that most of my students were drawing. All that industrial architecture was crying out for a pencil. And I was blown away by how much my college-age kids’ drawing had matured, along with their faces and their demeanor.
Bella tried watercolor for the first time.
Moved almost to tears by their growth I was—until I noticed two of them spitting over the rail. “We’re studying aerodynamics,” they explained.
OK, maybe one more year…
And Kamillah herself.
If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
Any resemblance between these two is completely coincidental.

PS. This was in yesterday’s Democrat and Chronicle. It was our class in Highland Park two weeks ago:

To each their own, within limits of course…

Look, Ma! No red! The red tones are made of quinacridone violet and  cadmium orange. (Finger Lakes marshes in autumn, 14X18, oil on canvasboard)

JG writes: What red do you like for plein air painting? Are there any substitutes for cadmium red that work as well but are cheaper?
Dear JG: I have pigments I like that others will find incomprehensible. That’s not just a question of personal taste; it is also a matter of where you live and the colors of the rocks, the soil, the foliage and the light.
I stopped using cadmium red many years ago because I could never use it up before the tubes hardened. It seems like a pricey paint to use as a modulator for greens. Where I live, there are few naturally-occurring true reds, even in the headiest autumn days, and cadmium red always seemed to obtrude unnecessarily. For a time I substituted naphthol red. It’s cheaper, tends to harden in the tube less quickly, and is less chalky when mixed with white. However, it tends (like cadmium red) to make muddy violets.
A few years ago, I stopped using red completely, and now I mix a combination of quinacridone violet and cadmium orange as an approximate substitute for red in the landscape. (I still use cadmium red for figure painting.) That gives me the weight of cadmium red, but it’s slightly less glaring, and the quinacridone violet permits me to mix to the blue-violet side without muddiness.
And while we’re on the subject, there are no greens in this painting, either.  (Catskill waterfall, 11X14, oil on canvas)

CB writes: I bought a paint labeled “Cerulean Blue Hue” that was a lot cheaper than the Cerulean Blue. What’s the difference?
Dear CB: A paint that is called a “hue,” such as “cadmium red hue,” is made of a blend of less-expensive pigments. There is nothing inherently wrong with these pigments, but they don’t behave the same as the more expensive ones, and you should at least know what you’re buying.
Every tube of paint made by a reputable manufacturer has a Color Index Name in really tiny type. This—rather than the seductive and often romanticized paint name—is what you should pay attention to. It’s a simple code, and no chemistry knowledge is necessary.
The vast majority of paints start with the letter P, which means it’s a pigment. Following that is a letter that indicates the basic hue family: R for red, O for orange, Y for yellow, G for green, B for blue, V for violet, Br for brown, W for white, Bk for black. Then there’s a number referring to the specific pigment itself. This is the best chart I know for paint pigments; it was designed for watercolor, but the pigment characteristics are the same through all media.
Generally speaking, there’s little to be gained by buying a hue mimicking a more expensive pigment. If you are comfortable painting with Cerulean Blue’s proximate, then it behooves you to learn what’s in it and mix it yourself, since you always have the greatest flexibility by working with pure pigments (rather than mixes) out of the tube.
If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

Painting at the Lilac Festival with my young friends

Lilac Festival, Highland Park, 11X14, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me.

My Jewish neighbors are celebrating Shavuot, which commemorates the day God gave the Torah to the nation of Israel. We Christians will observe Pentecostthis coming Sunday, when we will commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. The two holidays are closely related, and they are both based on the idea of gifts from God.

We are often so quick to throw away God’s blessings. A friend told me that she was advised to stop eating tomatoes for health reasons. “But Galicia has the best tomatoes in the world,” she said. “I can’t not eat them. It would be a sin.”
Sam spent most of his time talking to curious passers-by.
For some unfathomable reason, the human animal loves making rules by which he denies himself pleasure. The first and deepest of these revolve around food. Whether we are talking about the dietary restrictions of religion or the modern rules guiding the “worried well,” the end result is the same: self-denial that purports to make us better on physical, moral, or spiritual planes.
One of the “delicacies” of the Lilac Festival is deep-fried turkey legs. I will not embarrass the young person who actually attempted to eat one. I hope he survives.
Last Saturday, I made a tentative date to paint at the Lilac Festival today with Bella, Sam, and Jake. Today dawned with that delicate, airy beauty that is unique to spring in the Northeast. But I have a lot of non-painting work to do, and I felt torn—should I be “responsible,” or should I go paint with my young friends. But I realized that I couldn’t knowingly toss out this gift of a beautiful day, given me to enjoy by a God who loves me. And it was wonderful, and it was a joy, and an old geezer stopped by and told me a great joke:
 “What is difference between a professional artist and a Domino’s pizza?
“The pizza can feed a family of four.”
Bella struggling to keep her easel upright.
There are still spots open in our mid-coast Maine plein air workshops! Check here for more information.

I’m honored to have been selected to participate in the 2013 Castine Plein Air Festival

The first year I did Rye’s Painters on Location, I painted a lovely, long, low sailboat from a spot overlooking Mamaroneck Harbor. Living as I do in the Great Lakes basin, I’ve drawn and painted boats frequently enough. What I had overlooked was the tide, which confused me with constant angle changes.
My last painting for Rye’s Painters on Location. Mamaroneck Harbor, 18X24, oil on canvas. 
Mercifully, the boat’s owner was among the bidders that night and I escaped with my pride intact. The last few years I painted in that event, I worked in the same harbor, but from floating docks. This was much easier from a drafting standpoint but tough on the legs after two days.
Penobscot view, February 2013. Not Castine proper but close enough. How much more beautiful this will be come summer!
Such are the vicissitudes of painting in a plein air event. You can think you understand the subject, but still be confused at the point when your brush hits the canvas.
Last February, I took my family on an odd little pilgrimage up Castine way, looking for the West Brooksville childhood home of one of my chums. It was unutterably beautiful in February; imagine how lovely it will be in July!
Off-roading in Holbrook Island Sanctuary State Park, in my little Prius. Take that, you 4-wheel-drive vehicles!
Every inch of the coast of Maine is simply beautiful. One would be hard-pressed to come up with a favorite stretch of rock-bound coastline. And even within particular regions, there are so many choices! What will I paint? My pal recommended Our Lady of Holy Hope on Perkins Street, or sunrise at the Tidal Pool, or the Main Square. Any other suggestions?
At any rate, come watch me paint in Castine on July 27, and be sure to say hi when you see me. Or take my Maine painting workshops in the Rockland area—once a month through the summer months (check herefor more info, or email me). 

Paleo painting

Healthy and high in fiber: paleo painting! (By little ol’ me, of course.)

Frankly the paleo food movement seems a little arbitrary to me: vegetables and fruits are ducky; grains and legumes are not, even though all four exist both in the wild and in big agriculture. (I’d examine this more closely, but I’m afraid someone might actually attempt to explain it to me.)
My writer pal tells me that paleo cooking is huge right now, so in the interest of shameless self-promotion I’m founding a paleo painting movement. This is perhaps easier than paleo fashion (which might include anything prior to, say, 2006), or paleo cosmetics, which would require kohl (dangerous) and Spirits of Saturn (deadly).
So what would constitute paleo painting? Anything done on a cave wall would be fantastic but hard to transport, let alone duplicate on the inevitable umbrellas sold in museum gift shops. The earth pigments—ochre, sienna and umber—would be appropriate and useful, and they have the additional advantage of lightfastness. Ultramarine blue would be fine, too, as long as it was ground-up lapis lazuli and not a synthetic proximate.
Of course, we would have to dump the odorless mineral spirits (a petroleum product) and return to turpentine, which is a distillation of pine resin. And the only white we will have on our palette is lead white, since it’s been mined for thousands of years.
I decided to rehearse this today with the original paleo painting material: charcoal. It is harmless, cheap, and easy to find. However, I objected to peeling the decorative birches in my front yard to make paper, so used plain old newsprint.

I think I’m going back to modern pigments for field painting. If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

Ice Tsunamis? Seriously?

It is almost this cold in Rochester right now…

There has been a bitter wind blowing from the west for the last several days. It snow-squalled lightly in Western New York this weekend and it is flurrying in Saranac Laketoday. But at least we’re not experiencing ice tsunamislike those in Minnesota and Manitoba.
How does the plein airpainter facing a Little Ice Age (or floods, drought, hail, or locusts) prepare? I am a fan of the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph.
Another of my favorite things… the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph. It tells me everything I need to know.
Above I’ve posted a screenshot of this afternoon’s graph for my neck of the woods. The most pressing issue is that the temperature will rise and the wind will drop this week…not just for us outdoor painters, but also for the organizers of Rochester’s Lilac Festival. And it’s certainly useful to know that the rain is done for a while.
But I could get that information from the newspaper. What the graph gives me that I don’t find elsewhere is the Sky Coverage forecast. This evening and tomorrow evening, the cloud cover should diminish at dusk, giving us the potential for beautiful sunsets. I can set my schedule accordingly.
Of course, different parts of the graph will be more useful in different parts of the country. We’re seldom overheated up here in the far north, but if I were in Arizona, I’d care a great deal about the Heat Index.
This year, I’ve been watching the weather in two places: Rochester, NY and Rockland, ME. Maine tends to be warmer in winter and cooler in summer than we are here inland. Makes for good painting, so if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

That finely-tuned, whole-body drawing machine

Bella and Jake practice standing in counterpose.

Yesterday, I stepped up to Jake’s easel to demonstrate stealth gesture drawing. Our subject was Bella, who was deeply absorbed in drawing tiny redbud blossoms. Bella, who is athletic and graceful, was standing like a column in front of her easel, a perfect plumb-line from her head to her pressed-together high-tops. “How do you even do that?” I asked her. “I would fall over.”

What is perfect for gymnastics or dancing may not be perfect for drawing. Nobody would ever accuse me of perfect posture. Nevertheless, I work standing at an easel for hours at a time.
I pondered my own stance while drawing. My non-dominant (right) leg was bearing my weight. My left foot was turned so the outside of my toe-box was touching the ground. This provided a pivot point to control my position, allowing my spine to move in concert with my drawing arm. Not that I stand like this all the time, or that any two successful artists do it the same way, but a good drawing stance is dynamic.
The Peplos Kore, c 530 BC, was clearly drawing (ahem). She’s also standing in counterpose (contrapposto). Although she’s using her left hand, her weight is on her left leg. (Acropolis Museum, Athens)
“Bella,” I said, “try standing on one foot and see if it changes your drawing style.” The difference was significant. Her mark-making was immediately lighter and more controlled.

Jake didn’t just stand around in counterpose… he also drew this house.

We all know that painting while seated yields different results from painting while standing. (The former gives better control; the latter yields freer expression.) So it stands to reason that standing differently gives different results as well. The human body is a wonderful, finely-tuned machine. Change one parameter, and everything else adjusts to fit. 

(On that note, did you know there is not one but many arches to the foot, and they act as springs? Awesome design, that!)
We have a good time in the studio, on the street, and in the park.  And if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

The rest of the story

I found this while cleaning my room today, and somehow it seemed appropriate. I’m really big on making my students do self-portraits; maybe it caused Matt to become unhinged.



As I mentioned earlier this week, Matt Menzies used to prattle on about my falling over a cliff at High Tor. For some reason, he committed it to writing this week. It’s so uncommon to read about one’s own death in advance, I felt I should share it with you. (But I take umbrage with his characterization of my beautiful blue Prius. It’s kind of otherworldly and angelic, that car.)
They were enigmatic times for the odd trio… Carol had all but shed her worldly ties, and confined herself to her studio exclusively. The only contact with the outside world she could stand was the occasional visits from her long-time friends, the in and out of her sharp-minded daughters, and of course, the company of Marilyn and me. Marilyn and Carol had worked together a long time, it seemed, and as the youngest and most inexperienced of the trio I feel I have an unbiased view. Some days the debates raged louder than all the pigments in the studio, and on others silence prevailed. It was Marilyn who could keep it the longest. She cultivated a contagious Zen, painting blissful blues and warm greens. Every image purred as a fuzzy cat beneath her hand: she was as a master could be, although she painted within a calm, simple joy, and not in a pursuit of some masterpiece.
But I digress: it was Carol who burned the midnight oil, studying and meditating on the nature of pigment, the subtle neutralizations, and the high chroma incidence. She possessed a perception unlike any other. I took to trying to see like she did. I would study her palette and duplicate it the best I could. When I asked for help, she would wander over to my painting, sometimes commenting on what was good or bad. With a palette knife in one hand and brush in the other, she would push me aside and scrape away my strokes, replacing them with her own without hesitation, as if to show me ‘the way it is to be done.’ I blended into her process well enough, like a lab tech working on a grand experiment.
It was on such a day, at the end of an especially long and tiring season, that we took one of our outdoor plein air trips. Carol was fanatical in her search for the right angle, the right light. We loaded up the Prius (an awful dull light blue vehicle with the oddest angles) and we cruised down to the Southern Tier. The grey highway cut through and around the rolling green hills, and the deeper we went the higher the mountains rose. The day had blossomed into a drizzling overcast, but, we had come this far, and Carol’s foot continued to urge the car onward; Marilyn and I literally went along for the ride. As the Prius hauled up the mountain, I opened the window to breath in what I expected to be moist forest air, but as I leaned out I could feel nothing. The stillness was uncanny, and the raindrops barely tapped my face before evaporating back into the atmosphere. At times the sun seemed to work up the courage to break through, but then faded back into the cloudscape. Blue greens and grey blues permeated the landscape.
As we pulled to the crest overlooking a soggy valley, Carol stopped the car, looked back as if to indicate she had selected her spot, and proceeded to unceremoniously kill the engine. We all sat in silence for a moment, none of us particularly eager to step out into the moistened landscape, but we set to work and made good time in setting up. The painting proceeded for some time in silence, the drizzle dampening all sound and conversation. And as the water rained upon us, the tears rolled down our canvases. I wondered why they wept. My own sadness did not set in until much later in the day when the light began to fade. I concluded my work and I spun around in search of my betters. Marilyn was but a far-off speck on a neighboring hill, lost in a cloud so grey that it twinkled blue, but Carol…
Carol had set up on an adjacent crest, and I recalled looking over an hour or so before and seeing her facing far off into the distance, no doubt juxtaposing some specific tree with another hill line etc. But she was nowhere to be found. Her easel stood as a still as a deer in the fading twilight, an old rag hanging from it, motionless in the heavy air. As I approached I called out to her, with no reply. I looked down and around, and realized what must have happened. As the master stepped back paces to look at her day’s labor, almost complete, she must have backed to the cliff edge, lost her balance, and fell to her doom!
Marilyn had heard my shouts. I quickly ran in an arc but could deduce no other explanation. Dropping to my knees, I approached the cliff edge. I could see nothing but leaves and darkness. Marilyn arrived behind me, and as I peered up at her I knew that she knew what I had just learned. But there was no surprised look in her eye, and no sorrowful tears; only a calm acceptance, and a wise gaze. The grey-blue cloud loomed behind her and her silhouette glowed brown and orange in the fading sunlight. For a moment I thought maybe she had known of this event long before I had come over to investigate, long before this day had even arrived.
Not a word was spoken. We set to work folding the easels, carefully storing the paintings and supplies in the trunk. The gnarled rooted tree on Carol’s painting glistened with a vivid power, coiling upon itself, as if roaring atop the hill, gazing forward upon a valley it could never walk through. We closed the hood, and turned around to face the hilly crests one last time. As Marilyn paused and gazed for a moment too long I beckoned for her to come. “What for?” she called back. “Carol had the keys.”
At that realization the road seemed so much longer, and my way home impossibly far and full of obstacle. I was about to sink to the grass in despair, when Marilyn let out a quiet chuckle, and as I flicked my gaze over to her in confusion it erupted into laughter, and my confusion, my fear of this unknown life, was wiped away, to be replaced by a warm smile, and we began the hike down the mountain taking with us a final lesson from the old master.

Painting in Maine is definitely more interesting than falling off High Tor. If you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information. There’s still room in my workshops.

Rolling out my Q&A column

These are a few of my favorite things…

My media advisor suggested I do an occasional Q&A column. Today I was texted this great question, so no time like the present:
MM writes: I have an opportunity to show in NYC in June. My big (5’X4’) paintings have been taken off their stretchers and rolled. I am planning on making some frames and mounting the paintings on PVA on Masonite board. I’m not sure how to varnish them. They’ve been dry for months, but appear duller than when first executed.
Dear MM: First off, I question your strategy of mounting the canvases on Masonite. It’s terrifically heavy, and you are working with large canvases. I recommend you re-stretch the canvases.
As you’re framing them immediately, you can get away with lighter stretchers than you would typically use, so long as the stretchers are firmly secured to the frame itself. (You can screw them together from the inside; just make sure you don’t trap the canvas or break through the outer wall of the frame.)
I would not varnish them until they are secure because they are already stiff from having been rolled.
Oil paints don’t really dry in the sense that, say, your laundry or your hair does. The solvent—turpentine or mineral spirits—evaporates in a matter of hours, but the oil and pigments react with oxygen over time to form a hard surface. This process is called oxidation, and while most of it happens soon after you lay down your brush, the process never really stops.
A varnishing orgy for one of my students.

What you are seeing as “dullness” is the result of that oxidation. It is efflorescence, sometimes called blooming. You can avoid this to some degree by strictly following the “fat over lean” methods of traditional oil painting, but all paintings benefit from judicious varnishing.

Because the process of oxidation is slow and ongoing, you should wait several months to varnish. The idea is to put on a removable layer so that conservators can keep the layers separate when the world finally recognizes your genius.
I generally wipe down my paintings with Winsor & Newton’s Artists’ Picture Cleaner before applying a coat of varnish. However, you must watch carefully to be certain that your paint isn’t lifting while you’re cleaning. And I have a strong preference for matte varnish. The best of these are a combination of beeswax and varnish—use any reputable brand that you want. Apply a thin layer with a broad flat brush. Check it after it dries to make sure that the varnish isn’t “sinking,” and if it appears to have done so, apply another thin layer.
Never use your varnish as a medium, or vice versa. Varnishes are designed to be removed with solvent; this lead to problems like this. And just spend the money to buy a pre-made varnish. (If you doubt the wisdom of that, visit the Albright-Knox and see how badly some of those mid-century masterpieces have aged.)
Having said all that, I happily imagine that some conservator will write to tell me I’m doing it all wrong. Which is great; that is how I have learned everything I know.
Of course there’s still time to join us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information. There’s still room in my workshops.