ocean Archives | Carol L. Douglas

September 4, 2018

Monday Morning Art School: the coastal composition problem

It’s easy to throw all the weight to one side when painting on the coast. Here’s one way to fix that.

Roger Akeley’s solution to the coastal composition problem.

A few weeks ago, I got a message from student Roger Akeley. Roger had arrived at a drastic solution to the composition problem bedeviling his painting.

Squares are more static than rectangles, which is one reason I seldom paint in that format. However, that means their weightiness helps subdue out-of-balance compositions. More importantly, Roger cut off a good deal of the material that was pulling the painting to the left. That allowed the scree and seaweed at the bottom to take their proper place on the stage. It was a decisive solution.

Roger was dealing with a problem that regularly bedevils painters of ocean scenes: all the weight falls on one side. The second problem I commonly see (which he avoided) is a shoreline that’s an unbroken ellipse. It’s inelegant and unbelievable.

How can you avoid these problems?

Palm, by Carol L. Douglas

Seek out irregularity in the coastline. On the North Atlantic, this isn’t too difficult; great granite fingers reach out into the ocean. In the Bahamas, I found that significantly more difficult, as the coast was even and featureless and the surf lackluster. I used a foreground object—a palm—to create interest, above.

Historic Fort Point, by Carol L. Douglas

Still, there are places where the weight inevitably falls to one side, and there are no atmospherics to correct the scene. When this happens, I try to keep the values tight, as I did in my painting above. If the water isn’t significantly lighter than the trees, the composition will gel. The risk is in being boring, hence the high chroma.

For true mastery of this problem, we must consult that genius of coastal painting, Winslow Homer. In his watercolors from Cullercoats, he frequently used figures to break the horizon. His paintings from Maine, however, used two more elemental and powerful devices, which are ours for the looking.

Sunshine and Shadow, Prout’s Neck, 1894, Winslow Homer (watercolor), courtesy Art Institute of Chicago

Homer was the master of the sweeping diagonal. He used this over and over to hold our visual interest, playing it off the strict horizontal of the horizon line. In the watercolor above, the whole charge of the painting lies in the interrupted diagonal silhouette and its counterpoint in the clouds and sinuous driftwood. Only after serious looking do we notice the beach roses at the bottom; they are completely subdued into the shadows.

Northeaster, 1895-1901, Winslow Homer, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Northeaster, above, uses a similar diagonal, this time playing against the towering white shape of the spray. In themselves, these two elements would have made a brilliant painting. But wait—as they say on late night TV—there’s more. The dark in the wave to the far right echoes the rocks. It’s a threatening element, but it also gives us an easy order in which to ‘read’ the painting. We see rock, the shadow on the breaker, the spray, and finally that wisp of light in the distant waves. It’s not painterliness that draws us through this work; it’s masterful composition.

The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog, 1894, Winslow Homer, courtesy Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY.

I seldom ask my students to copy masterworks. The Artist’s Studio in the Afternoon, also by Homer, is an exception. I don’t care if you do it in paint or pencil, but take an hour and set down a copy of this painting. It is a perfect composition—energetic, spare, lively. When you’re done, please post a comment in Monday Morning Art School on Facebook telling me what you’ve learned.

June 26, 2018

The dubious environmentalism of modern public art

Plastic netting covered with LEDs, blowing over St. Petersburg’s old pier? Sounds more like an environmental disaster than public art.

Artist’s rendering of the proposed sculpture at night, courtesy of city of St. Petersburg, FL.

The Statue of Liberty has stood in New York Harbor since 1886. Conceived as a statement about the end of slavery, it has come to represent us as a nation of immigrants. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC is another monument that speaks profoundly to Americans. The National War Memorial looms over the most important government buildings in Ottawa with its message of remembrance. Even the Eiffel Tower was designed as a symbol of modern science and industry. Such meaningful public art exists worldwide, in large cities and small towns.

Enter modernism, with its stubborn refusal to accommodate meaning. “The Kelpies”by Andy Scott rise 30 meters next to the Forth and Clyde Canal. They are best appreciated zooming past on the M9. They capture nothing of Scotland and certainly nothing of the shapeshifting, devious magic of the mythical beasts. There was Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates. I walked through it many times, trying to catch the magic. The magic, I decided, was in the coffers of nearby stores that catered to tourists. Then there’s Penetrable, by Jesús Rafael Soto. These urine-colored plastic shower curtains so disfigured Frederic Church’s Olana that they’ve been extended for another season.

Artist’s rendering of the proposed sculpture during the day, courtesy of city of St. Petersburg, FL.

The latest entry into the debate is a proposed sculpture at St. Petersburg, FL, by Janet Echelman. The $3 million net sculpture will be “made of the same material that is used for astronauts’ spacesuits,” said the Tampa Bay Times. I’m not sure what that means, since spacesuits contain nylon, Dacron, Neoprene, Mylar, Gortex, Kevlar, and Nomex. Another source said the sculpture would be polytetrafluoroethylene, or Teflon. Yum.

It will span about 390 feet and be high enough that it can’t be molested by humans waving hockey sticks, said Echelman. A member of the arts commission asked about fishing poles. Echelman hadn’t considered them. She should. I imagine there are fishermen quite capable of reeling in that sculpture on 130 lb. test line.

And the sculpture will—of course—be brightly lighted, with LEDs in various bright colors.

Artist’s rendering of the proposed sculpture at night, courtesy of city of St. Petersburg, FL.

Ironically, the park for which it is slated was created to preserve waterfront green space. Spa Beach is officially a passive park, meaning that permanent structures (anything that will last more than six months) are banned. No problem. City Attorney Jackie Kovilaritch has said that “a substantial change of use” ordinance will be introduced to fix that pesky problem.

Echelman assures the city that her work is designed to be wind-resistant and that a consortium of engineers say it won’t end up as junk plastic in the ocean. Pardon me, but we’ve all heard that before.

Artist’s rendering of the proposed sculpture at night, courtesy of city of St. Petersburg, FL

There’s the question of light pollution and the possible impact on seabirds and sea creatures, none of which can be predicted with certainty. But mostly, to me, it’s a question of where people can go to get away from the endless energy, anxiety, and bustle of the ever-expanding human colony.

Let this be a monument of sorts, then—to the death of any sort of real environmental stewardship, to the end of our love of green space, a funeral marker for a planet that once knew how to sleep at night.

February 15, 2018

Wallowing in plastic

A witty series of nature prints point out our devastating dependency on plastic packaging.

Double-crested Cormorant, Male, by John LaMacchia et al.

Rockland, ME, has provisionally passed a law banning single-use plastic shopping bags. These bags are invaluable to plein air painters, but we’re a cheap group and we’ll figure out another way to dispose of our oily rags. (One of my most popular posts ever was instructions on how to fold a plastic shopping bag to fit more neatly in your kit.)

I support the new law, although some of my friends are opposed. Plastic bags caught in branches are an annoying side effect of densely-packed people, and we get lots of visitors in the summer. It won’t go into effect until next January, giving small retailers a chance to unload their stocks of bags. Plastic bags are already controlled in major cities in Canada. And my favorite grocery store—alas, not in Maine—has always had a bring-your-reusable-bag policy, which I navigated for years without trouble.

The ubiquitous tree-bag of North America.

Nobody knows how long it really takes for plastic packaging to break down, because we haven’t had it long enough to tell. Plastic degrades when exposed to sunlight, but it happens more slowly when it’s cold. A current guesstimate is that a foam plastic cup will take 50 years to decompose and a disposable diaper will take 450 years. On both ends of the plastic bag’s life cycle, it creates microplastics—either as bits and bobs from the manufacturing process, or as waste from the breakdown of bigger plastics. Marine organisms are indiscriminate foragers, so they eat these microplastics. Bigger pieces of plastic end up in marine animals’ guts, with deadly results.

Not using plastic packaging is often an easy choice, a matter of choosing the eggs in the cardboard container instead of that other brand. It’s far easier than, say, buying a smaller car or building a new mass-transit infrastructure.

Eastern Towhee, 1. Male 2. Female, by John LaMacchia et al.

Artist John LaMacchia describes himself as “an artist that makes things… and then he shows them to you.” Among his current work is a riff on John James Audubon’s Birds of America. This series of giclée prints, also called Birds of America, points up the difference between the environment of America 200 years ago and the environment today. For the birds, it’s our trash that makes the difference.

Red Knot, Female, by John LaMacchia et al.

Of course, the modern artist is an idea man, and must outsource the art skills. For that, LaMacchia turned to British ornithologist and illustrator Daniel Cole. LaMacchia sketches out his ideas using a combination of photography and drawing, and Cole executes them. A calligrapher, Hamid Reza Ebrahimi, does the plate notations in calligraphy, using an English Round Hand style commonly used for copperplate engraving.

LaMacchia’s goal is to create 435 plates, matching Audubon’s complete oeuvre. He’ll have to speed up the process, though, since the trio has finished six prints since they started in 2014. Of course, Audubon included birds that are now extinct, like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, the Carolina Parakeet, and the Passenger Pigeon. That should cut down the final count.

January 13, 2015

Heavy weather

Heavy Weather, underpainting, by Carol L. Douglas

For this painting, I am trying to envision a sailboat being hit broadside by a large wave, with the question of whether it will capsize or right itself left unanswered.

My own sailing has been seriously curtailed for decades. That means that if I have questions about what a boat might do under sail, I have to consult an expert. My go-to guy is my cousin Antony. Not only does he get to sail in the southern Indian Ocean, but he’s in a totally different time zone, so hopefully he will answer my questions while I sleep.

The Gulf Stream, 1899, by Winslow Homer.

This morning I was looking for photos of boats in heavy weather. I came across the following, by a blogger who identifies himself only as Joe:

Sometimes the sea can be a very scary place.

A very, very scary place.

Before you undertake a voyage to adventure, make sure you are well trained, have some real sailing experience, and know how to survive if things go wrong. Believe me things can go wrong. Thank God I have my Navy training.

Fishermen at Sea, 1796, J.M.W. Turner

Don’t assume that the guy sitting in his flight suit on the ready alert is going to come and rescue you. You might be out of range.

For God’s sake, learn how to read the weather!

For home work, I made my sailing students keep a notebook chronicling the daily weather. It had to have the forecast from the newspaper with their own observations.

The Fog Warning, 1885 by Winslow Homer

That might be a great idea for my painting students, too.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

September 9, 2008

Painting in Maine

This is my favorite painting from my recent Maine trip. It’s quite small—6X8—and was done during a downpour on a shingle beach in Penobscot Bay. I like the color and the energy. It comes close to my sense of what the ocean is about.

(I plan to teach in Maine next July so if you’re interested, please let me know.)

After painting in Maine, I saw All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionists at the Katonah Museum of Art. What a different world they were painting! It’s an excellent show, and runs until October 5, 2008.