Category: buoy

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Oh, buoy!

Day #2. Will finish today. I love this fundraiser for Penobscot Bay Resource Center almost more than anything else I do!
If I were gonna make a habit of painting on buoys, I’d find some way to hold them steady. I painted on this one for five and a half hours yesterday, and it wasn’t my painting hand that was tired, it was the hand clutching the buoy.
I haven’t got a table per se in my studio, so I sat in the dinette in my kitchen to work on this. That had the advantage of being more comfortable, but it had the disadvantage of exposing me to my peanut gallery.
How can you tell the lobster is attacking New York? Because that’s the Brooklyn Bridge!
“Do you really think a lobster could stand on his tail like that to attack the city of New York?” asked my son.
“A lobster could theoretically grow that big,” noted my daughter, who is a biomedical engineering major and presumably au courant on matters of biology. “Unlike humans, who have a finite number of cell replications, they can keep growing forever.”
Even my engineer husband and daughters haven’t found a way to make working on this buoy comfortable. Any suggestions?
“However,” she added, “I think the lobster should be lighted from the bottom. He is, after all, in the City.”
I hate when my kids are right. But I also plan to finish this painting today, so they can have it in Stonington, ME, by May 15.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. My Belfast, ME, workshop is almost sold out. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Help! I need ideas.

The buoy itself, awaiting ideas. Any suggestions, friends?
Last year, when I got a buoy in the mail, one of my kids asked, “Who sent us an oversized dreidel?” This year, we’ve moved on, so the question is, “What should Mom paint on that oversized dreidel?”
Once again, I’ll be participating in Penobscot East Resource Center’s  Annual Lobster Buoy and Reverse Auction. There are a lot of very witty buoys submitted, some of which you can see here.
Last year’s buoy.
Penobscot East Resource Center works to rebuild a small-scale diversified fishery where fishermen and their communities are a part of the governance of fishing. They serve 50 communities from Penobscot Bay to the Canadian border. This is the most fishery-dependent stretch of the East Coast.
If you’ve followed the news, you know that lobster wholesale prices have been in freefall—they’re somewhere near a twenty-year low. This is devastating for lobstering communities. (The New Yorker did an interesting piece on why that hasn’t translated into lower restaurant prices, which you can read here.)
So they’re a good organization, and I want to support them by painting a good buoy, one that will make patrons smile and pull out their wallets.

Gnomes are known to indulge themselves at times. I’m leaning toward painting them, but am open to suggestions.
Last year I painted a mermaid on a rock. I discovered in the process that the tapered shape of a buoy makes a wraparound painting devilishly difficult. Still, I want to paint something realistic again this year (ahem). I’ve bounced around from gnomes to fairies to gluttonous gnomes feasting on lobsters while being serenaded by fairies.
Any suggestions, friends?


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

As I’ve mentioned here before, I recently painted a Merdonna and Child for an auction to raise money for Penobscot East Resource Center. You can see my buoy here. 
When you’re done leafing through these, you can see all the buoys here. (And I hope you will consider bidding on them to raise money for this organization, which you can also do by emailing the director.) There are more than 60 buoys altogether, and they are very fine work indeed. These were selected under no greater organizing principle than that I liked them. But you may find others you like much better. If so, would you let me know? 

Paula Dougherty’s “Seabirds”

This is colored pencil. As absurd a notion as doing trompe-l’Ĺ“il using fist-sized pastels. And yet it works. The artist says this is a combination of “realistic and mythical seabirds.”  She’s from Brooklin. 

Julie Reed’s “Dressed to Krill”

“This little buoy has been hanging out underwater and has come up dripping with a net covered in krill! Who knew zooplankton could be so beautiful?” says Julie Reed, who–when she’s not beading–is a nurse and volunteer EMT in Deer Isle. 

Jean C. Burdo’s “Seaside Village”

I don’t usually respond to folk art, but this is awfully well-executed, whimsical, and curiously true to what a Maine seaside village looks like. 

Mary Ellen Kelleher’s “Zinnias & Bugs”

“Oh, buoy! Is there anything better than a day in the garden,” it asks.  Great flowers and a luscious blue sky…. and the painter is from Rockland. 

Audrey Yankielun’s “Number 2”

How did Yakielun look at a buoy and see a pencil? Was she a bean-counter in Westfield, NJ before (as she states on her website) “walking away from my corporate position in 2007?” No idea, but she made me say, “I wish I’d thought of that!”

Jill Hoy’s “Dancing Tree”

No mystery to this: it looks like a Tom Thompson or Group of Seven tree, so of course I like it. Hoy operates a gallery in Stonington, and I think I’d like to wander up to see it on one of these trips. 

Persis Clayton Weirs’ “Torrey Pond”

Having just painted a buoy myself, I’m in awe of the control needed to do this work on this surface. Torrey writes, “A mile walk back into the woods from our house leads to a beautiful wild pond. Cat tails and lily pads line the shores and spread into the shallows. Torrey Pond is a haven to eagles, water birds, beavers, snapping turtles and an occasional visiting moose visiting from the mainland.” 

Rebekah Raye’s “The Owl & Pussy Cat Set Sail”

Well, why not? (I think I actually saw their beautiful pea-green boat in Camden harbor last month.)

Join us in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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Why do mermaids wear shell bras?

I can do anything when I have bungee cords, including painting on all sides of a buoy. (Yesterday’s objections retracted.)

It was 54°, rumbling, and pouring rain here this morning. Nobody wanted to be outside; my suggestions to walk were summarily rejected by my son, my husband, and my personal coach, in that order.  So I went upstairs and spent some time with the mermaid I’m painting for the Penobscot East Resource Center. “You’re complaining?” she whispered in my ear. “That’s typical weather for us mermaids. Why do you think we wear these silly shell bras?”
Back of the buoy, a lobster boat.
As soon as she dries, she is going in a box and traveling back to Maine.

August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
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What did the sea say to the mermaid?

It’s a Merdonna and Child. Or something.
When this buoy arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, certain members of my family were flummoxed. “Who sent us an oversized dreidel?” Since I was expecting it, I recognized it for what it was, but then wondered whether it was supposed to go dreidel-side up or dreidel-side down. A cursory search on the internet was useless—evidently, Mainers are not into social conventions like which end is up.
I took a guess, and put the stick on the bottom. Too late to worry if it’s wrong.
How do you paint on a buoy? Lash it to your easel.
I am painting it for a fundraiser for the Penobscot East Resource Center to be held later this month in Rockland, ME (more on that later). One would imagine it was a simple matter of filling, sanding and priming the surface, but, as usual, I’m pressed for time.
The biggest problem in painting on a curved surface turned out not keeping the figure proportional (as I expected) but drawing a straight horizon line. It’s very difficult to lay a ruler down on a cylinder. Tomorrow I’ll mark it with string.
There was a time when I used these wee little brushes a lot. That was a long time ago.
Eventually I bungee-corded it to an easel, but I’m only going to be able to paint on one side at a time. So much for working all parts of a painting at the same rate of development.
Sandy just told me she learned in her Renaissance art history courses that the infant Jesus always looks so weird in order to prefigure Christ’s death. I think that’s a fiction that comes from art historians never actually painting. Just try drawing a squirming, wailing baby—without photography, you’d have to drug the little darlings to get them to hold still. My mermaid is a little hackneyed, but her baby is coming along well. 

Baby’s cute. Mom needs work.

I have to leave in a few minutes to go teach at Schoen Place on the Erie Canal. There are no buoys there; there are (to my knowledge) no fresh-water mermaids either. Have a happy evening!

August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
Oh, BTW, what did the sea say to the mermaid? Nothing. It just waved.