Category: Aurora Borealis

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Reunion

The aurora borealis didn’t show up, but my friends did. Our plein air event at Ocean Park is off to a great start.
The new sandbar, 10X8, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas

I arrived in Ocean Park in a flurry of excitement. The sun has been kicking up an electro-magnetic storm and it was possible the Aurora Borealis would be visible as far south as Boston. While Ocean Park is two hours south of my house, I thought there was a good chance we might get a glimpse of them.
I’ve seen the Northern Lights many times, but never with paints in hand. I’ve painted them in my studio but I long to paint them en plein air.
Goosefare Brook oxbow, 8X6, painted last year. It’s gone now.
To that end, Frank Gwalthney and I drove down to Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. This 50-mile-long Federal preserve touches Ocean Park. In addition to sheltering sea birds, it also provides an oasis of dark sky in Vacationland. But, alas, there was no shimmering green light, merely beautiful stars.
I spent five weeks painting in Canada and Alaska last year and never saw them there, either. They are fickle and shy.
Still, it’s not what you don’t have; it’s what you do have, and what I have is a happy band of painters whom I treasure as friends. Anthony Watkins set up to paint the Ocean Park Ice Cream Fountain. The rest of us headed off to the mouth of Goosefare Brook.
The Heavens Declare, 48X36, oil on linen, by Carol L. Douglas. Once again, I miss the chance to paint Aurora Borealis in the wild.
We’d heard that the tides had scoured out a new channel for the brook, but I was unmoved. Goosefare Brook wiggles around in its basin annually. My skepticism was misplaced. The oxbow is entirely gone. Its hundreds of tons of sand now sit out in the ocean as a new sandbar off the creek’s mouth. This has created a tidal pool of still water, suitable for young kids and anyone else who doesn’t want to fight breakers.
We understand that the ocean is unfathomably powerful, but that tangible proof is more convincing than any number of warnings.
Straight-on breakers, 10X8, by Carol L. Douglas
Despite our slow start and happy chatter, we all managed to turn out credible first paintings. In a few minutes, I’m heading downtown to start my first painting of the day. I think it will be a streetscape. If you’re in southern Maine this morning, stop to see me. You can get directions at Jakeman Hall, at 14 Temple Avenue. (If you’re new to Ocean Park, you may need to set your GPS for Old Orchard Beach.)

See you soon!
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Wherever we go, that’s where the party’s at

"Parker dinghy," by Carol L. Douglas. 8X10, oil on canvasboard.

“Parker dinghy,” by Carol L. Douglas. 8X10, oil on canvasboard.
On Friday, Brad Marshall and I had only a short time to paint before he had to head back south. We decided small watercolor sketches were all we could pull together in the time we had. Sandy Quang is my former studio assistant and is now working at Camden Falls Gallery this summer. She joined us with her sketchbook before work. Since we weren’t using easels, the simplest thing was to dangle our feet in the water and draw the lobster boat on the next dock.
Sandy, me and Brad hard at work at Camden harbor, with our feet in the water.

Sandy, me and Brad hard at work at Camden harbor, with our feet in the water. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Jalbert)
Across the harbor, another painter was working away at his easel. It was George Van Hook.  I called him on my cell phone to say hi, since my voice would never carry that far over open water. He was ready for a short break so he came over and joined us on our dock.
I never know who I’ll see at Camden’s Public Landing, but there’s always someone I know—a sailor, another painter, or a Camden or Rockport friend just enjoying the sun. And I’m always meeting new people, too. For me, plein airpainting is often about balancing the party with the need to do serious work.
We didn't have time to paint anything polished, so we each did little watercolor sketches before saying goodbye.

We didn’t have time to paint anything polished, so we each did little watercolor sketches before saying goodbye. This was mine.
Later that day, my husband and I joined painter Bobbi Heath and her husband aboard their lobster boat for dinner. Moored in Tenants Harbor, we were surrounded by wildlife. An osprey took up residence on the mast of a neighboring boat, chirruping to his mate who flew nearby. Suddenly he dropped into the sea like a rock, and rose with a fish in his beak—and then he was gone, bringing home the bacon. A seal poked his dappled nose out of the water nearby. Black Guillemots—a kind of puffin—potted around us as we ate. The light dropped and the evening breeze picked up, and we glided back to shore under a sliver of new moon.
Lobster dinner on a lobster boat.

Lobster dinner on a lobster boat. (Photo courtesy of Douglas J. Perot)
Today I start a series of wild perambulations, which include Acadia National Park, Scotland, and an Alaska-to-Nova-Scotia painting trip (plus three more events in Maine). I expect to be home for good in mid-September. On Saturday I finished the painting above, which is of a Parker dinghy built on Deer Island, NB. That allowed me just enough time to pack and get to the Schoodic Institute, where I met up with this year’s workshop students.
After dinner at the Commons, Ken and Corinne Avery and I spent some time looking at aurora borealis predictions. Turns out these can’t be made very far in advance, but there was some possibility of solar-wind activity last night. The partly-cloudy sky was predicted to clear by 11 PM.
My first realization is that I need an app for this. My second is that they exist. Since I’ll be spending much of the next month traversing prime Northern Lights territory, I need to figure one out.
Alas, the aurora borealis didn’t show up. It’s a whole new week, however, and thePerseid meteor shower is expected to peak on Thursday and Friday. Who needs sleep? I do, of course. But I feel the likelihood of a spectacular night-sky event in my bones.
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Taking chances, redux

I can’t decide whether to call it The heavens declare the glory of God or This Little Light of Mine. It’s a terrible photo, but it’s difficult to shoot a dark painting when it’s still wet and glossy.
Photographs exaggerate the chroma and contrast of the Northern Lights; they are more ephemeral in reality. They also move constantly. I wrote about the snaking patterns in Frederick Church’s Aurora Borealis here; there is something more real than reality in how he painted them.
It’s very difficult to photograph a dark painting when it’s wet; this is the best I can do for now. When I’ve finished the remaining paintings on my list, I’ll come back to it and consider whether it needs more light in the sky. For now, the answer is that I don’t know.
Northern Lights, Tom Thomson, 1916-17

Tom Thompson painted the northern lights in this sketch from life, from his aerie in Algonquin Park in Ontario. “The best I can do does not do the place much justice in the way of beauty,” Thomson wrote to his patron, Dr. J.M. MacCallum. In fact this painting captures the energy and motion of Aurora Borealis almost perfectly.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Taking chances

Winter Lambing, 48X36, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me.
Critiquing a painting this week, I focused on the concrete: there isn’t any texture in the background, the yellows are too cool, the vase is too busy. A few hours later, my student looked at my Winter Lambing and said, “I’m playing it too safe, aren’t I?”

This is taking a chance: obliterating the structure of a painting and starting again.
When I started my painting of the Aurora Borealis, I’d wanted the full gamut of color in those crazy lights. However, for some reason, we usually see green ones, so I went with the green phase.
Not finished, but an improvement on the prior iteration, I think.
Last week, Britain was lit up by an amazing display of Northern Lights. Considering that a gift, I immediately decided to restructure my painting. That involved redoing an already-realized underpainting, but a good rule of painting is, “If you could paint it once, you can paint it again.”
Wet brush in the left hand, soft dry brush in the right hand.
The Northern Lights are, by and large, soft, ethereal, and edge-free. I’m painting them two-fisted: one hand holds a wet brush with a soft slurry of color; the other has a dry brush with which I blend the edges.  This is time-consuming, but I hope it will be realistic when I’m finished. No paint can match the colors of the Northern Lights, so the problem will be making them work with the colors I have. 
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! 
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Aurora Borealis

Aurora Borealis, 1865, Frederic Edwin Church
Strange, fiery forms uprise
On the wide arch, and take the throngful shape
Of warriors gathering to the strife on high,—
A dreadful marching of infernal shapes,
Beings of fire with plumes of bloody red,
With banners flapping o’er their crowded ranks,
And long swords quivering up against the sky!
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
The Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, are caused by the collision of charged solar plasma with Earth’s magnetic field. The arc of darkness in Church’s painting, above, is not something I’ve ever seen here along Lake Ontario, but Church was painting from a a sketch and description from Arctic explorer Isaac Hayes. Apparently, the arc is caused by alignment to magnetic north.

You can tell the information was secondhand, because the color shifts in the Northern Lights are in reality layered one on top of another like rainbow jello. Church—a keen observer of nature—would not have made such an elemental error. 

The wormy shapes in Church’s painting appear in no photograph I’ve ever seen of the Northern Lights, but they somehow convey the dancing motion better than any still photo does.
By the time Church painted his Aurora Borealis, scientists understood the displays to be connected to solar activity. However, that was new knowledge at the time of the American Civiil War. On September 1-2, 1859, the largest solar flare ever recorded caused visible Northern Lights as far south as the Caribbean. Another large solar flare, visible into Virginia, occurred on December 23, 1864. Even a rational people could be forgiven for seeing portents in these events.

Our Banner in the Sky, 1861, Frederic Edwin Church
Linking the Aurora Borealis and war and destruction is as old as the written word. Pliny the Elder wrote of it as a “flame of bloody appearance… which falls down upon the earth.” A spectacular Aurora Borealis that appeared in London in 1716 was linked to Jacobite rebellion in Scotland.
My sketch of the northern lights in Maine.
Today I sketched the Aurora Borealis over Owl’s Head Lighthouse. Although I have seen the Aurora Borealis many times, I must rely on photo reference for the lights themselves, for I now live in a city where light pollution obscures the Northern Lights. I’m taking artistic license in pointing my scene to the north, but only a native will realize that.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!