Category: Rolling Acres Farm

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Rachelā€™s garden

One of the great virtues of old age is knowing that small problems are transient. So is bad painting.
Rachel’s Garden, by Carol L. Douglas. Watercolor on Yupo, full sheet.
Plein air events require that you churn out paintings despite the weather. The caterers, the hall, the advertising and the auctioneer cannot be easily rescheduled. The wet, whipping show must go on. Iā€™m not doing an event, but my goal for this residency is to paint outdoors despite the weather.
September can be the worst month for this, because itā€™s hurricane season along the Atlantic coast. We arenā€™t in as much danger here in Maine, but we often get the sloppy dregs of other peopleā€™s storms.
Neither Monday nor Tuesday were good painting days. On Monday, there were cutting winds, compensated in part by a dull pink sky that hung around all morning. Tuesday, it simply poured.
Yesterday (9/11) was a national day of mourning that I was determined to avoid. Itā€™s also the anniversary of my motherā€™s death four years ago. Here at Rolling Acres Farm, Iā€™m surrounded by young people and creative ferment. I was grateful for that.
Painting with Rachel Alexandrou in the rain. Photo courtesy Rachel Alexandrou and Maine Farmland Trust.
The barn here is built on the standard New England plan: hayloft above and animals below. My parents owned such a barn for fifty years, so I am as familiar with this model as I am with the lines in my own face. Perhaps there was a painting of gentle remembrance in the undercroftā€™s murky light. No luck; it is filled with the timbers from the original loft.
Rachel Alexandrou is the resident gardener here. Her garden is very different from the ordered rows of my youth. Itā€™s beautiful and productive, but also very unstructured. It would have been easier to paint a slice of it up close, but that wasnā€™t possible in a pouring rain. Besides, I was in no mood to ā€œkeep it simple,ā€ as a sensible painter would.
My childhood home, from History of Niagara County, N.Y.,1878, by Sanford & Company.
The garden is bracketed by a dead sapling and a Black Walnut. This tree is common in Americaā€™s heartland; a massive one was already middle-aged in my parentsā€™ lawn when their house was drawn in 1878. It was still there when the house was sold three years ago. While Black Walnuts are valuable timber trees, theyā€™re also allelopathic; meaning they kill any young plants trying to get a footing near them. The one at Rolling Acres Farm is the first Iā€™ve seen in Maine, but I didnā€™t want to paint it. I find them threatening.
That same black walnut in 2010.
I set up under a porte-cochĆØrethat connects the house and barn. Rachel has been experimenting with making Black Walnut ink, so she joined me.
The mist and rain came close to defeating us. I was further hampered by not being able to find my palette. The Maine Farmland Trust is dedicated to environmental stewardship, so there are no plastic plates. I used a paper one for a palette, not too successfully.
Rolling Acres Farm (unfinished) by Carol L. Douglas, was painted Monday.
I quit as dusk neared. It was then that I noticed I had a very soft tire. My car just isnā€™t up to the rocky tracks Iā€™ve been subjecting it to. A slow drive into Damariscotta and an air compressor, and I could head back to Clary Hill to see if Iā€™d dropped my palette there. I scouted along the lane to no avail. Walking back, I realized I have a marker light out in my car.
My temporary palette. Ouch.
One of the great virtues of old age is knowing that small problems are transient. So is bad painting. Today or tomorrow, it will all be fine again.
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Clary Hill

Stone walls are a subtle reminder of the vast human labor that has gone into these fields.
Clary Hill #2, by Carol L. Douglas. Watercolor on Yupo, full sheet.

I ran into Kevin Beers in Damariscotta, and asked him if heā€™d ever been to Clary Hill, site of a painting by that name by Joseph Fiore. He had, and offered directions. However, knowing where Iā€™m going violates one of my cardinal rules of shunpiking. Instead, Clif Travers and I headed north and up until we found the hill and its blueberry barrens. We did not, however, find the scene that Fiore painted.

I dropped Clif off at Rolling Acres Farm and collected my oil-painting kit. If I hurried, there was just enough time to finish a painting in the waning light. Itā€™s perfectly serviceable, but the composition doesnā€™t begin to express the skewed perspective on this hilltop.
Blueberries, by Carol L. Douglas. By late September, the red of the blueberry barrens is an impossible color.
In early September, the groundcover is orange-red and the small outcroppings of trees are green. Farther along in the season, the plants will be an impossible, deep, uniform red. There are open patches where nothing grows. In a more conventional landscape, these would be small ponds, but here they are granite, rising to the surface in long fingers.
The farther north you travel on the Atlantic seaboard, the more blueberry barrens you see. They and their close relatives, cranberries, are the only crops that we harvest from wild plants. But blueberries arenā€™t planted and cultivated in purpose-built bogs, as cranberries are. Instead, blueberries spread from rhizomes. You donā€™t plant them as much as encourage them. In the right conditions, they grow like weeds, including in my lawn. In that sense theyā€™re more like a natural resource than a crop.
Clary Hill #1, by Carol L. Douglas. Oil on canvas, 36X24.
Wild blueberries bear little resemblance to the fat highbush blueberries that are grown commercially in milder climes. Ours are short, tough, shrubby things, with tiny berries. The wild ones like the acidic soil and abundant sunshine of the far north, and they have their counterparts in the subarctic ring worldwide.
Today rocks can be moved with heavy equipment, but the stone walls that crisscross blueberry barrens were built by unknown, long-gone hands. The berries are hand-harvested as well. That makes the stone wall an integral part of the portrait of a blueberry barren, a subtle reminder of the vast labor that has been done on this spot for generations.
Sketch for the painting at top.
On Sunday, I went back again with watercolors. As I was setting up, a birder stopped by. Heā€™s been visiting Clary Hill for forty years, and encouraged me to cross the gate and walk to the top. There, laid out below me, was Joseph Fioreā€™s vista. I would have had to trespass to get his exact view, but the wishbone track peters off to the right, just as he painted it. Far in the distance is the coastā€”St. George, perhaps, or Owls Head.
Just like old times!
I was just settling down to work when my daughter Mary showed up. Our phones location-share, so she drove over from Augusta to find me. Mary traveled across Canadawith me, studying and reading while I painted. It was like old times. She did homework while I painted, on a barren hilltop in the middle of nowhere.
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A month in the shadow of a great painter

Ghost stories, cemeteries, and the work of a great painter

Clif and I visited this old cemetery in the waning light.

If I had any talent for poetry, Iā€™d have exercised it last night. Iā€™m at the Joseph Fiore Art Center in Jefferson, Maine for a one-month residency. My room faces east. I watched the slow rotation of the night sky, the stars overflowing their courses. The dawn rose red and fiery, glinting through the trees off the waters of Damariscotta Lake.

I spent yesterday with the other visual artist in residence, Clif Travers of Kingfield, ME. Clif is both a writer and painter, and recently returned to his hometown after a long stint in Brooklyn. His work here will involve panels and prose, brackets and blocks. I’m curious about what the end result will be; I imagine he is, too.

Moving into a temporary studio is more daunting for a studio painter than for me; I simply had to offload my extra supports and was done.

My studio away from home.

When weā€™d both finished, Clif and I took a quick jaunt to Rising Tide Co-op in Damariscotta and Pemaquid Point. Itā€™s rare that I can play tour-guide to a native Mainer, but Kingfield is way inland and north.

There is a family cemetery set within the aptly-named Rolling Acres Farm. Itā€™s of a type I identify more with Scotland than America, a set of small ā€˜roomsā€™ separated by carefully-laid up dry walls.

Katahdin, 1975, Joseph A. Fiore, courtesy Maine Farmland Trust

Iā€™d already retired when Clif called up that I should come down and see the waning dayā€™s pyrotechnics. The few white stones glowed peach against the dark woods. We set off through the hayfields to photograph it, me in my bare feet.

ā€œMaybe this place is haunted,ā€ Clif enthused. Well, I was raised in a notorious haunted house, but it was late and I refused to tell him about it. Ghost stories need their buildup, after all.
My workspace is in an old barn, redolent of old hay. But I donā€™t expect to spend much time there. Iā€™ve a goal in mind for this residency. It involves the intersection of water and land, andā€”mostlyā€”painting big. Unfortunately, my monster Rosemary & Co. brushes are delayed, so Iā€™m going to have to be flexible in my approach.

View from Bald Rock, 1971, Joseph A. Fiore, courtesy Maine Farmland Trust

Who was Joseph Fiore (1925ā€“2008) and why is there an art center dedicated to him in Jefferson, ME? Fiore was born in Cleveland, the son of a violinist. He was musical himself, and that is very evident in his painting. He attended the experimental Black Mountain College on the GI Bill and studied with Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, and Willem DeKooning. Later, he taught there.

With those instructors, itā€™s no surprise that Fiore was, foremost, an abstractionist. However, his work is rooted in nature and he also painted lovely, loose, realistic landscapes. His paint is worked very thin, and his brushwork is loose and measured. Leaving that much canvas is the mark of a good draftsman, because any dithering shows.
After Black Mountain closed, Fiore settled in New York, where he taught at Parsons. In 1959 he and his wife began summering in Maine. They bought an old farmhouse in Jefferson, which they used for the rest of his life.

Clary Hill, 1970, Joseph A. Fiore, courtesy Maine Farmland Trust

Fiore and his wife Mary were avid supporters of Maine Farmland Trust. When the Trust purchased this waterfront farm, the idea of the art center was born.

My first response to being surrounded by his work was a kind of intellectual shock, where everything I thought I knew about painting was challenged. Now, nearly 24 hours later, Iā€™m adjusting somewhat. But the opportunity to be submersed in another artistā€™s work is not to be sneezed at, so Iā€™m adjusting my plans to allow time with the paintings every day.
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What about an artistā€™s residency?

Mature painters can apply for a residency at one of these great Maine art centers.

Courtesy Hog Island

This time of year, I can see the water of Rockport harbor from my bedroom window. Iā€™ve been around the world, and Iā€™m lucky to have landed in one of earthā€™s great beauty spots.

For those of you who dream about painting here, Iā€™ve assembled a listing of visual artist residencies in the state of Maine. I have only included residencies that do not charge participating artists a fee. There are others, such as Skowheganā€™s summer program, that are wonderful but cost the artist money.
Bremen, ME
Applications due February 1, 2018
Residency Length: 2 weeks
Directed toward the artist whose work brings a broader appreciation of the natural environment, culture, and/or history of the coastal Maine ecosystem, and/or supports the mission of the Seabird Restoration Program to promote the conservation of seabirds and their critical habitats.
Applicants should be in good health and should be able to regularly walk the 6/10-mile uneven wooded path to the main campus for services. Expect solitude and immersion in nature, including varied weather and the possibility of ticks and mosquitoes.
At its nearest point, Hog Island is approximately Ā¼ mile from the mainland. Camp staff can ferry you back and forth if necessary. Residents who are comfortable with ocean navigation are welcome to bring a kayak and tie up at the cottages for their own transportation and at their own risk.
Courtesy Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
Deer Isle, ME
Open application starting January 1, 2018
Residency Length: May 27 ā€“ June 8
Haystackā€™s Open Studio Residency provides two weeks of studio time and an opportunity to work in a supportive community of makers. The program accommodates approximately 50 participantsā€”from the craft field and other creative disciplinesā€”who have uninterrupted time to work in six studios (ceramics, fiber, graphics, iron, metals, and wood) to develop ideas and experiment in various media. Participants can choose to work in one particular studio or move among them depending on the nature of their work. All of the studios are staffed by technicians who can assist with projects. Note: this is not a workshop and participants are expected to be technically proficient.
Courtesy Hewnoaks Artist Colony
Lovell, ME
Applications taken during the month of February, 2018
Residency Length: up to 2 weeks
Magnificently situated on the eastern shore of Kezar Lake, Hewnoaks offers an extraordinary setting of inspiration and beauty. By resurrecting its art-making traditions we aim to honor its creative history and preserve its environmental integrity.
Painters, sculptors, photographers, filmmakers, choreographers, actors, musicians, writers and curators are welcome. Preference is given to Maine artists. Artists are expected to work in their living space.
Courtesy Maine Farmland Trust (Rolling Acres Farm)
Jefferson, ME
Applications opened on December 1, 2017
Residency Length: 1 month/ 6 weeks
Residencies are for Maine artists, except for the Visual Arts program.
Six, month-long residencies: two in July, two in August and two in September, for visual artists. One placement is for an out-of-state or international artist, and one for a Maine artist.
One writing residency a minimum of four and maximum of six weeks long, July through mid-August. Applicants in the following categories can apply: Poetry, Prose, Fiction/Non-fiction.
One performing arts residency a minimum of four and maximum of six weeks long, during mid-August through end of September. Applicants in the following categories can apply: Performance/Dance, Storytelling, Songwriting.
Art & Agriculture- Seasonal Resident Gardener Position
This is a part-time, 5-month seasonal position for someone with at least 2 years of organic gardening experience and an affinity with the arts. The resident gardener will be living on-site with the visual arts and writing residents, and is encouraged to use their time at the Fiore Art Center for their own creative pursuits if desired. 
Courtesy Monhegan Artists’ Residency
Mohegan, ME United States
Applications opened on February 1, 2018
Session length: 2/5 weeks
The Monhegan Artistsā€™ Residency provides free comfortable living quarters, studio space, a stipend of $150 per week, and time for visual artists to reflect on, experiment, or develop their art while living in an artistically historic and beautiful location.
There are two 5-week sessions for artists with significant ties to Maine and one 2-week session for K-12 visual art teachers in Maine.
Courtesy Schoodic Institute
Winter Harbor, ME
Deadline: January 15, 2018
Session length: 2 weeks
In exchange for a two-week immersive experience, artists lead one outreach presentation with the public, and donate within one year one work of art that depicts a fresh and innovative new perspective of Acadia for park visitors.
Three categories of applicants are considered at present: Visual Artists; Writers; and At-Large Participants working in such forms as music composition, performing arts, indigenous arts, and emerging technologies. Applications are reviewed by appointed juries including park staff, community members, past program participants, and subject matter experts.

Courtesy Tides Institute

Tides Institute

Eastport ME
Deadline: February 1, 2018
Session length: 4/8 weeks

Founded in 2013 and now in its sixth year, The StudioWorks Artist-in-Residence Program at the Tides Institute & Museum of Art (TIMA) offers residency opportunities to visual artists from the U.S. and abroad to deepen and develop their practice within a community setting. The studios, museum and housing are located within the historic downtown and working waterfront of Eastport, Maine and overlook the U.S./Canada boundary.