2016 | Page 4 of 12 | Carol L. Douglas

November 9, 2016

How did that happen?

My beady little eye on the world.

Since I had no use for either major-party candidate, I went to bed early last night. As the wits were saying, the bad news was that one of them would be elected. However, my phone pinged at 11 PM. It was a friend who is an ardent Hillary supporter, talking about how she wanted to die. After chatting with her, I went on Facebook and saw innumerable shocked and angry posts. (I’m an artist from New York, so the majority of my friends are liberal.) The same people who’d been celebrating all day yesterday for electing the first woman president were posting things along the lines of, “I’m trying to understand. How did this happen?”

In the 1950s, psychologist Leon Festinger developed a theory of cognitive dissonance, which basically says that holding contradictory beliefs is stressful and people will do anything to squirm out of it. The more deeply held the belief, the stronger the dissonance. Among the strategies we use to cope is confirmation bias. This is our tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. When we read and remember information selectively (and we all do), we are engaging in confirmation bias.

Today our best friends are machines that do that biasing for us. The average American spends 11 hours a day using electronic gadgets. All of these have some kind of confirmation bias built in (the channels you select, for example, affect the news and commercials you see) but the most insidious are your computer and your smart phone.

Yes, your computer is watching you, and yes, it is developing a profile for you based on the sites you visit, your search terms, your purchases and social media profile. That’s relatively innocuous when it comes to what salad dressing you buy, but in 2012, the major parties started using the same tools to target political ads. We started seeing advertising that reinforced, rather than challenged, our beliefs.

Our clickstreams also influence the results we get when we are searching. Google has complicated (and patented) algorithms that say that when we search for A, B, and C, the result will be offered in a particular order. That’s based on user history, and it has a tendency to lump us into herds.

Then there’s the fallacy that you choose your friends. Every time you open Facebook, it scans and collects all the posts made by all your friends and ranks them. The algorithm is complicated and hidden, but how frequently you interact with the poster is certainly part of it. So too is hiding similar posts.

Needless to say, you very rapidly weed out the people you don’t particularly like, the ones you find boring, or—in many cases—the ones who disagree with you. Most users only see the top few hundred posts, which they’ve selected through their own internal biases. The machine then takes over and reinforces these biases. The posts you favor influence the posts you see. This is why last night so many people posted things like, “But I don’t know a single person who supported him!”

This creates terribly bad assumptions about our group behavior and further polarizes us. It’s why so many of us were blindsided by the results. I’m not saying you should ditch your computer—heck, I want you to continue reading my blog—but I am saying that you need to test its version of reality.

November 8, 2016

Son of violence

“Salomé,” 1870, by Henri Regnault.

This Election Day is as much a mirror to our society as it is a precursor of things to come. We have endured 22 months of the basest kind of electioneering, and what that will tell future historians about our culture is not a lie.

I knew very little about Alexandre-Georges-Henri Regnault other than his saucy Salomé, which was a sensation when he painted it at the age of 26. I noticed it only because it bore a resemblance to a friend of mine, Sari Gaby, who also works in the same lush Beaux Arts style. Regnault is pretty much forgotten today.

“Thetis bringing the Arms forged by Vulcan to Achilles,” 1866, by Henri Regnault.

Regnault’s lifespan roughly equaled that of the Second French Empire. He was five during the February Revolution and eight when Napoleon III’s coup d’étatdissolved the National Assembly. During his childhood, France lost 95,000 soldiers in the siege of Sevastopol. Later that decade, France went to war in Italy and Mexico, in addition to the usual skirmishes required to expand and maintain a colonial empire.

His young death is partly the reason for his obscurity, since he really didn’t produce much work. Equally important was his subject matter. A child of war and revolution, he painted what he knew. His visceral painting style and heroic death made him a hero in France. But by the end of World War I, the world was profoundly tired of war. Martial paintings didn’t have the cachet they’d had two generations earlier.

“Automedon with the Horses of Achilles,” 1868, by Henri Regnault.

Born in Paris, Regnault was the son of Henri Victor Regnault, a noted chemist and early photographer. In 1866, the son won the Prix de Rome withThetis bringing the Arms forged by Vulcan to Achilles.

That gave him a stipend to study in Rome, so he duly went, although he grew bored with the traditional course of study. While in Rome, he paintedAutomedon with the Horses of Achilles, a classical painting with an energetic twist. It was well-received. In Spain, he painted the Spanish revolutionary, General Juan Prim. Prim rejected his painting, but it proved popular with the French public.

“Portrait of General Prim,” 1868, by Henri Regnault.

Neither his portrait of Prim nor Execution Without Hearing Under the Moorish Kingsshould be considered outside of their political context. Prim had just returned from Mexico (leading the fight against France) and was helping to launch a successful rebellion against the increasingly-tyrannical rule of Queen Isabella.

Execution Without Hearing Under the Moorish Kings of Grenada could be called the evil twin of John Singer Sargent’s Fumée d’ambre gris, painted a decade later. In both cases, the vertical composition drives our eye toward the figures. But whereas Sargent’s Morocco is a romantic travelogue, Regnault’s Grenada is dark and bitter. We are aloof from Sargent’s woman bathing herself in scent, but Regnault forces us to look up at his violent spectacle.

“Execution Without Hearing Under the Moorish Kings of Grenada,” 1870, by Henri Regnault.

The Franco-Prussian War took down the Bonapartists, but it also killed Regnault: he died in the Siege of Paris, in the Battle of Battle of Buzenval on January 19, 1871. He was just 27 years old. As an artist, he was exempted from military service. As a child of war, he felt obliged.

For a time, his heroism was feted, in works by Camille Saint-Saëns, Henri Chapu and Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier. That didn’t make him any less dead, of course. The loss of his son and his laboratory in the same siege completely undid his father, who never recovered. Pointless, but Regnault was a product of his time, just as we are.

November 7, 2016

That Ugly Renaissance Baby thing

“The Madonna on a Crescent Moon,” artist unknown.

I spent the weekend with my grandchildren, who are both perfectly lovely but of distinct and different temperaments. I once painted my grandson. Time got away from me before I could ever paint his sister.

Whenever I spend a lot of time with them, I come back to a conundrum of pop art history: why are babies so misshapen in Byzantine and Renaissance art?

There are several academic explanations for this. The first is that naturalism wasn’t the primary goal of these paintings. Thus the Christ child was never shown crying or having his terribly stinky diaper changed. We like to assume that’s because he was the object of veneration, but we moderns wouldn’t paint babies in those situations either.

“Madonna of Chancellor Rolin,” Jan van Eyck, c. 1435. The infant Jesus is the world’s great high priest in this painting, as indicated by his pose and the landscape.

But we do impute childlike qualities to children, whereas the pre-modern mind was more inclined to see them as little adults-in-training. In Renaissance and Byzantine art, the infant Christ was a representation of his Incarnation—baby, but also always God. Thus he and his mother must foreshadow his agonizing fate, or depict some other characteristic of God Incarnate.

Personally, I think the answer is mainly a practical one. First, the paintings weren’t intended to be viewed up close; they were meant to be seen at a distance, above an altar, in uneven lighting. That meant heavy modeling was important, and that isn’t compatible with the beautiful delicacy of babies.

"The Ognissanti Madonna," Giotto, c. 1310

“Madonna Enthroned,” Giotto, c. 1310.

Real babies make terrible models. As they approach toddlerhood they tolerate sitting only for limited time. They squirm, they wriggle, and they will do anything to get down and play. They are not miniature adults. Their proportions are different and difficult to capture. Their heads are enormous, their eyes widely spaced, and their noses flattened. They have loose folds of fat dangling here and there. Try getting that down on paper while your model is screaming to get loose. I suppose the artists could have drugged the little nippers, but I doubt many mothers would go along with that.

“Maria Hilf,” Lucas Cranach the Elder, c. 1530

Ever take a baby to a studio for a photo shoot? If so, you know you can’t always get a baby to smile for the camera, and if you ask a toddler to smile, you’re likely to get something very artificial. Imagine, then, trying to project a look of complex calm and suffering onto a baby face, especially when you only have minutes to work before the baby falls asleep, soils himself, or is hungry and bored. Changing the expression on a model’s face is one of the most difficult things one can do, even with all the time in the world.

My grandson is not the only baby portrait I’ve painted, but I’ve never painted a young child from life. No modern would ever try it without reference photos, me included. Kudos to those early painters who did.

November 3, 2016

Seeking a new gallery

“Hazy mountain afternoon: Keuka Lake,” by Carol L. Douglas. Available through the Kelpie Gallery.

Yesterday, Sue Baines from the Kelpie Gallery in South Thomaston picked up eight of my works, with another half-dozen or so headed there next week. I’ve noted this gallery since it opened, since it’s on my way to Spruce Head. It stands off neat and proud against its setting near the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum. Being noticeable is a good first sign.

I’m in the process of searching out new gallery representation, and the Kelpie Gallery was the first place I approached. It started with a visit, obviously.

“Overlook,” by Carol L. Douglas. Available through the Kelpie Gallery.

The Kelpie Gallery hosted the Third Annual Paint Along the Weskeag in August, which gave me an opportunity to spend some time there unattended. I was looking for professionalism in grouping and displaying paintings. This doesn’t always mean lots of white space—it depends on the real estate—but it does mean that the gallerist is thoughtful in matching work thematically and in color relationships.

I wasn’t looking for other artists who paint like me. I wanted to see artists whose work is concerned with the issues I find compelling—the light, feel and architecture of the landscape. It is important to me, also, that they be contemporary in outlook. There is nothing inherently wrong with following the Old Masters, but a gallerist who focuses on that won’t really understand my work.

“Monhegan Lane,” by Carol L. Douglas. Available through the Kelpie Gallery.

When you show in a place that’s not philosophically attuned to what you’re doing, you won’t sell. Worse, your work subconsciously responds to their group norms. The biggest difficulty I ever face is getting into the wrong group of artists and trying to live up to their standards. It never works.

I asked how many artists the gallery represents. If you’re one of too many, your work is likely to languish in a back corner somewhere. “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member,” Groucho Marx famously said, and there’s some sad truth to that. If it’s too easy to join up, they may be less than selective. Luckily, that isn’t the case here.

“Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove,” by Carol L. Douglas. Available through the Kelpie Gallery.

A good gallerist spends a long time looking at your work and takes only a select few. Watching them sort through my work is my favorite part of the process, by the way. Often they will choose works that I find unresolved. That tells me something about where I’m headed as a painter.

November 2, 2016

The tax collector

“Focus,” 2009, flashe on gessoboard by Susan Crile.

Susan Crile ought to be the patron saint of artists. Despite being in the collections of the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, and other museums, the IRS decreed that her work was “an activity not engaged in for profit.” She owed $81,000 in back taxes for five years’ returns. Ultimately, Crile lawyered up and prevailed. In 2014, the tax court ruled that Crile had “met her burden of proving that in carrying on her activity as an artist, she had an actual and honest objective of making a profit.”

Through her art, Crile has been an outspoken critic of our war conduct, raising awareness of the human and environmental damage being done in the name of the American people. A cynic could be excused for wondering if her politics had anything to do with her tax question.

Years ago I had the hobby-vs-career conversation with an IRS auditor. She couldn’t have been nicer, but she made it clear that I needed to earn more or stop taking the self-employment deduction. For non-artist readers, that might be an oh-duh point. Why work if not to make as much money as you can?

“Daylight Darkness,” 1991, charcoal and pastel on paper, by Susan Crile.

Such a threat shapes your work by reducing your tolerance for risk. It was at that point that teaching became so important for me, because teaching gives you a reliable taxable income. So does painting “safe” work, which Ms. Crile was decidedly not doing. The Crile decision gave us back the room to take risks, which is a very big part of artmaking.

It’s not just artists who make the choice to operate at a loss for a while. This happens with any project that bleeds money at the research and design phase. Investors know the potential rewards outweigh the high risks.

For me, letters from the IRS are an almost-annual rite. Being self-employed makes me a high audit risk. It’s part of the cost of doing business.

“Guantanamo: The Black Box Detainee with Stinging Insects,” 2010, black gesso, acrylic and white chalk on paper, by Susan Crile.

This year was unique because, as of the end of October, I had two IRS inquiries outstanding. The first was trivial: they didn’t have a record of a payment. I sent them a copy of the check, expecting it to go away. So yesterday, when I received a demand for the money—with interest—I started to boil. “They’re really on your case,” my accountant friend observed mildly.

Well, actually, they aren’t. It was an ordinary cock-up where their computer is outrunning their staff. Their representative couldn’t have been more diligent in researching the problem. However, it consumed hours of my time and gave me the sour stomach and headache one gets from interfacing with an intergalactic power. And of course it ain’t over until I get the final notice in the mail.

I personally don’t think our Federal taxes are too high, but I do think they’re way too complicated. They either eat up time that the taxpayer could be using elsewhere, or eat up the money he uses to pay lawyers and accountants. I think they also encourage people to overpay. I’ve heard many times from friends that they don’t take every deduction to which they’re entitled because they’d rather not be in the IRS’ sights.

Why do we tolerate this system, I ask as my paints dry up on my palette.

November 1, 2016

A man’s world, and it needs fixing

“Christmas Still Life,” 1916, by Gabriele Münter. If art prices were tied to competence, Münter would be among the top-selling 20th century artists, instead of being remembered as Kandinsky’s mistress.

There have always been women painters, but they never had the opportunity to enter either apprenticeships or academies—whichever were the great training systems of the time. The ones who rose above the lack of opportunity had advantages of birth (Sofonisba Anguissola and her sister Lucia) or fathers who were painters (Artemisia Gentileschi)

It has not been until the modern era that we have seen women artists rise in their own right. Even in the 20th century, many of them hitched their stars to men (Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz), sometimes with disastrous personal results (Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky).

“Breakfast of the birds,” 1934, by Gabriele Münter.

ARTNews does an annual survey of inequality in the art markets and it’s very depressing. For the past two years, 92% of paintings that went through the big New York auction houses were by men; 8% were by women. If you think that’s terrible, that’s about the same ratio as is represented in MoMA.

There are idiots who still say that this is because men are better artists. What does that even mean? That women don’t paint like men? If that were true (and it isn’t) would it be a question of worth or of difference? It’s galling to see the Art Establishment, which sneers at traditional values, gleefully going on in their merry misogynistic way. But until women get wall space in galleries and museums, they’re not going to achieve the prices they deserve.

Cabin in the Snow at Kochel, 1909, by Gabriele Münter.

Last night, a reader sent me this short essay about power plays for women. I wish every woman artist would read it. The art market isn’t a meritocracy any more than the workplace is—probably less so, in fact, because art is so subjective.

Women are naïve about power and influence, usually ascribing their failures to their own personal shortcomings rather than the culture. We project deference instead of confidence. We petition instead of negotiating.

As was true in medicine, engineering and law, we can’t wait around for the culture to change. Men are either players or benefitting from the status quo. Some women are fellow-travelers, just as they were in those other professions. I’m open to suggestions about ways to equalize the art field, readers. We need to use every tool in the arsenal to claim our rightful place in the marketplace.

October 31, 2016

Marriage, learning, and dissatisfaction

Barb tightened down the last strip before we left for the night.

I spend so much time doing other things that one could be excused for not believing I’m married. In fact, we have been pursuing this fidelity lark for 36 years. There have been long stretches of conventional living, spent raising kids, paying mortgages, and pursuing careers. However, we’ve never been inseparable, even though we prefer to do things together.

When my husband left for band practice on Thursday night, our houseguest asked me if I was going to go with him. That sort of surprised me, because I couldn’t imagine using my time like that. My husband helps me when I need help and vice-versa, but we each have our own work to pursue.

This week, he’s on the road and I’m home in Maine. When that happens, I exercise a vicious double standard. I can camp on the road somewhere and I’ll check in as soon as I have cell service. He’s just going to a Hyatt hotel in a large city, but he’d better call me when he gets there or I’ll squawk until he checks in.

I chose ladder duty. I must be nuts.

One thing about not living in my partner’s pocket: when he asks for help, I jump. When he realized—in Freeport—that he’d forgotten something important, I changed my plans and met him to deliver it. Yes, I was doing something equally important at the time, but our special relationship dictates that he takes priority. That’s not a gender-role issue; he would do the same for me.

This meant I had to tell my friend Barb that there was a glitch in our plans to install The Usual Suspects: An Ongoing Investigation, opening on November 11 at Pop Up 265 in Augusta. She’s not feeling well and the delay made her very nervous. Still, we got the main structure in place by the time we ran out of steam, and I have to say, it looks nice.

I was helped by having no expectations or emotional engagement. I was seeing her idea for the first time and it was exciting. She just saw the ways in which it failed to meet her plan. If you’ve ever helped a friend clean, you know exactly what I mean. For you, it’s a lark; for your friend, it’s all wrapped up in emotion and ownership.

The painter’s equivalent to an installation is the Big Framing Project for a solo show.

My husband has heard that exact same pessimism from me as he’s helped me frame work for shows. It’s almost impossible for artists to see the work of our hands objectively. My daughter Mary told me that every time I finished a painting on my Canadian trip, I announced to her that it wasn’t that good. I’ve learned to not share that initial discontent with the public, but it’s hard to keep it totally to oneself.

We only made one significant error hanging Barb’s panels (our initial spacing of the magnets). That was nothing short of miraculous, since the figures were intended to be evenly spaced around an old room with uneven walls and more than a few obstacles. If you’ve ever wallpapered in an old house, you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

In so many things, the learning lies in the doing. The best a teacher can do is steer you away from pitfalls. Often, your hard-won knowledge is task-specific, never to be used in that form again. But as it joins your sum total of knowledge, it informs you in new ways. Take those young-wife tasks of my misspent youth—wallpapering and sewing. Both helped me as I helped Barb.

October 28, 2016

Actually, it’s not just the light

“Bloomfield Farm,” by Carol L. Douglas. The soft rolling hills, hazy light and deep, gravelly soil are typical of the western part of New York.

This has been a week of retrenchment, the backroom work that has to happen so that one can go back to the rough-and-tumble brush duel. Among other things, I met with a gallery owner. We talked about the differences between my New York and Maine paintings. Earlier this week I said it was the light, but it’s also the land.

I have been thinking about the spodosols that underlie the boggy boreal forest here. These are found in Maine, eastern Canada, Scotland, and Scandinavia, and they’re partly why these North Atlantic regions tend to have a similar feel. They provide romance and color for artists and an uphill battle for farmers.

"Mountain Lake, Spring," by Carol L. Douglas. In some ways the Adirondacks can stand in for Maine because they have the same soil type.

“Mountain Lake, Spring,” by Carol L. Douglas. In some ways the Adirondacks can double for Maine because they have the same soil type.

Spodosols are also found in the Adirondacks, which may explain why Winslow Homer had such an affinity for both places. I watched a friend garden in the lower Adirondacks for a few years. While he was able to amend the shallow soil, the short growing season ultimately did him in.

“Catskills Farm,” pastel, by Carol L. Douglas.

My working life has been mostly spent in upstate, central and western New York. There, the soil is very deep and well drained, often running to clay. It is also essentially basic, meaning there are no broadleaf evergreens in the forest understory. If untended, it quickly reverts to forest, which tends strongly to maples, ashes, tulip trees and other hardwoods.

“Kaaterskill Falls,” by Carol L. Douglas. This is the shale of Southern Tier and Catskill Mountains.

It can be extremely stony from glaciation, but it is never rocky in the way of Maine. The exception is where rivers cut gorges through its bedrock limestone and shale. Western New York is oddly flat compared to the rest of the Northeast. The hills are low, worn, humpy things, remnants of glacial formations that are much flashier in other parts of the continent. That is why people think of it as Midwestern, rather than Mid-Atlantic.

“Corn Hill Methodist Church,” by Carol L. Douglas. This ruin is of Medina Sandstone, which is a cool red color.

Medina sandstone, which underlies the Lake Plains, is reddish in color. That gives its dirt a cool red undertone. The color is echoed in the Victorian Gothic architecture of its cities and towns. A great percentage of the land is under production, since this is very fine farming soil, both for truck farming and for grapes.

“Middle Falls of the Genesee River,” oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas.

A landscape painter is in some ways a journalist. We notice and communicate facts about our world. We frequently tell people that painting is in the seeing, not the paint application. Nowhere does that play out more than in plein air work. The more observant we are, the more we tell the story of the place.

October 27, 2016

Power of women

“Jael and Sisera,” by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1620.

Since the Bible is a compilation of 66 books by 40 authors, it is a lot of things, including an historical record. It includes rather ugly facts about the condition of women in the ancient world. That doesn’t make it misogynistic; it makes it history. It’s also replete with women heroes.

For some reason, the history of Renaissance art includes a great love for the two warrior women, Judith and Jael. I’ve been thinking a lot about these paintings since my visit to the Met last weekend. Why is it that the predominantly male art world was so fascinated by the hammer of retribution being wielded by the feminine hand?

The story of Jael comes from the Book of Judges. Deborah, the only named female prophet and judge in the Bible, advised Barak to mobilize troops to meet a Canaanite threat. Barak whined. Deborah agreed to go with him, but told him that the honor of victory will go to a woman because he was being such a wimp. A downpour mired the Canaanite chariots and they were defeated. Their general, Sisera, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, wife of Heber the Kenite. She gave him a jug of milk and a blanket and he fell asleep. While he was sleeping, Jael drove a tent peg through his skull.

“Judith Slaying Holofernes,” by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1614–20.

The story of the beheading of Holofernes by Judith comes from a book we now consider deuterocanonical, although it was part of the Catholic Bible during the Renaissance. Judith visited the tent of the Assyrian general Holofernes, who was about to trash Judith’s hometown. Drunk, he passed out. Judith sawed his head off, and it was carried away in a basket.

“Susanna and the Elders,” by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1610.

The story of Susanna and the Elders is considered doctrinal by Catholics and Orthodox Christians and apocryphal by Protestants. As Susanna bathed in her garden, she was watched by two voyeurs, who, as elders, were powerful. They threatened to accuse her of meeting her lover in the garden unless she agreed to sleep with them. Refusing to be blackmailed, she was about to be put to death when young Daniel insisted on a proper investigation. The elders’ stories didn’t match, and Susanna’s virtue escapes unscathed.

These subjects are considered part of a medieval and Renaissance art genre which inverts the typical power relationship between men and women. They included myriad secular stories and classical myths as well as the Bible stories I’ve mentioned. What they reflect are the gender politics of the late middle ages, not those of the Biblical era.

I’ve used paintings of these subjects by Artemisia Gentileschi. She was almost alone in being a successful woman Renaissance painter. She has a unique view of the Power of Women discussion.

“The Meeting of David and Abigail,” by Peter Paul Rubens, 1630.

There is another hero woman mentioned in Samuel who didn’t get much traction with painters. Abigail overrode her loutish ingrate husband to intervene with an irate King David. She has been painted at her meeting with David, when she prophesizes his greatness and begs him to spare her people, saying that in his moment of greatness, “ my lord will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or of having avenged himself.”

The part I would like to paint, however, is when she went home to Nabal and told him off for being such an ass. He had a hangover, and then he had a stroke, and then he died. A fine ending, that.

October 26, 2016

It’s not me, it’s the light

“Dyce Head Light,” by Carol L. Douglas

In the past year, many people have talked to me about how my paintings have changed. This week I have a visitor from near Ithaca, NY. She’s a painter, so she’s visually observant. She talked about her impressions driving up the coast.

“While the leaves are gorgeous in New York right now, the light and clouds are different here,” she mused. “And the colors are different. We don’t get the clarity of light in New York. There is too much haze.” She went on to describe the light spilling through the clouds as the sun set, the warm golds of the reeds and marshes set against the blue-purples in the shadows and the slate gray of the clouds. It was a lovely word-sketch and it got me thinking.

“Nunda Autumn Day” (pastel), was painted before I moved to Maine.

There is nothing wrong with the filtered light of the mid-Atlantic region; it’s why my skin is so flawless going into old age. But there is less contrast in the landscape. Consider the work of Cornelia Foss, with whom I studied and greatly respect as a painter. She is the person who has had the greatest influence on me in terms of thinking about color. Her landscapes are absolutely accurate for Long Island, but they would be flat here in Maine.

“Behind the schoolhouse” was painted as a storm moved in on Monhegan, but the light is still stronger than it would have been in New York (painting by Carol L. Douglas)

I’ve been vaguely aware that I’m focusing more on value in my paintings these days, but I haven’t thought much about why that is. While talking to my guest, I realized it’s just a response to the high-key light of Maine.

“Keuka Lake” is an example of a lovely milky New York sky.

I’m not really doing anything differently; I’m painting something different. It would be a sign of failure if my Maine looked like my New York, wouldn’t it?