workshop Archives | Page 5 of 23

July 7, 2016

Frog weather

I have decided to repost my BDN blog here so that my non-Maine friends who object to the survey can see it.

Class at Schoodic Point.

My pal is a righteous church-going grandmother from Allegheny County, PA. Yesterday, she was offered $50 to perform an immoral act. We were both a little confused about the economics. If that’s the going rate, prostitution really doesn’t pay well.

In reality, she’s a residential advisor at a center for adults with developmental disabilities. This is empowering and important work. I teach painting, which isn’t as immediately beneficial to society, but is probably equally important in the bigger picture.

A happy student

I’ve been painting since many of you were in short pants, and teaching since you were angst-ridden teenagers. You could read my long and boring CV here, or you can cut to the main point: lots of people have become better artists by studying with me.

I understand from my pals that it’s hotter than blue blazes in my birth state of New York. I was dismayed to see photos from last weekend’s Battle of Fort Niagara reenactment in Youngstown, NY. The parade grounds appear as parched, brown and dusty as the ancient walls of the fort itself. It’s been hot, humid and hazy downstate, too, where there’s been an air quality advisory for metropolitan New York. In fact, that’s the way it’s been going for much of America so far this summer.

Concentrating.

Here in Rockport, Maine, it is hitting the 70s, but there is a cool breeze. In Acadia, it might even be a few degrees cooler. That’s one reason you should consider joining me in Acadia’s Schoodic Institute for this year’s Sea & Sky workshop from August 7 to 12.

The Schoodic Institute isn’t open to the public. To stay there, you need to be part of an educational program. That makes it quiet and secluded. I’ve watched its transition from a former navy base to its current incarnation as an educational institution. Someday we will all brag about having been there.

Me, demoing.

Some of the best painting on the East Coast is there. High granite cliffs drop down to the misty green depths of Frenchmen’s Bay. Atlantic surf roars onto Schoodic point in the clear light of Maine, which is like no other light in the northeast.

If you’re a history buff, you know that this is Acadia’s centennial year. That makes our workshop part of an amazing run of history.

Our lobster bake.

The cost for this whole shindig including instruction, meals, accommodation, and a lobster feast is just $1600. Compare that to other workshops and you’ll realize it’s a great deal.

Yes, I have a few openings left. I believe that the people who go are those who are meant to go. Perhaps that’s you. If so, email me soon so you can snag one of these last spots.

April 29, 2015

Hidden gems

A vintage photo of the Tidal Falls from August 1954, by Ellis Holt.

Yesterday I was packing art books when I came across a forgotten little volume, The Plein Air Artist Guide to Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island, by Gail Ribas. Leafing through it, I realized that students driving to my workshop at Schoodic Point will drive right past the Tidal Falls at Hancock.

The Tidal Falls is about halfway between Ellsworth and the turnoff to Winter Harbor.

Reversing falls are caused when tides force water up against a prevailing current. They dot the coast: in Blue Hill and Lincoln, ME, at Cobscook Bay down east, and on the St. John River in New Brunswick. And there’s one right along our motor route to Schoodic.

Corea Heath is also managed by the Frenchman Bay Conservancy (photo by Bob DeForrest)

The farther north you wander in Maine, the bigger the tidal range gets. In fact, the highest tidal range in the world is not far away, at Burntcoat Head in Nova Scotia. Its mean spring range is 47.5 feet and its extreme range is 53.5 feet. The bigger the tide, the more noticeable the reversing falls phenomenon is. (I suppose that’s why nobody notices them in the Great Lakes.)

It’s amazing what you find when you start packing.

The Frenchman Bay Conservancy owns 4.2 acres overlooking the Tidal Falls at Hancock. There are a pavilion, picnic tables and grills—in short, the perfect set-up for a break from driving.

Beautiful Corea, ME.

I love a good boreal bog, so I’m excited about another property owned by the Conservancy: Corea Heath. This is on my workshop itinerary for the week, so you don’t need to hunt it out on your own. It’s a 600-acre habitat for inland and coastal waterfowl and wading birds, migrating land birds, and rare plants.

Rising from the edge of the wetland complex is a mixed forest of hardwoods, spruce, fir and pine, including a beautiful stand of the fire-dependent jack pine.

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

March 9, 2015

Let’s talk about summer

Sunset off Schoodic Point. Just another day in Paradise.

I’m going to be speakingabout New York painters and their relationship with the Maine Coast at the Moore Auditorium in Acadia’s Schoodic Institute on August 12. This is scheduled concurrently with my workshop at Schoodic from August 9 to 14. The talk is free, and if you’re in mid-coast Maine that week, I hope you join us.

There are four spots left in the workshop. Last year I erred in letting a few extra people sign up, on the assumption that someone would drop and it would all work out. That didn’t happen, and we had too many painters. This year, I’m holding the line strictly at 12 participants, so if you want to come, I recommend you hold a place. From past experience, I’m confident that this workshop will sell out.

Painting the view from Mt. Battie during last summer’s workshop.

We have designed this workshop to include room and board so you can concentrate on painting. Schoodic is an unspoiled gem of the Atlantic coast. Pounding surf, stunning views of Cadillac Mountain, and veins of dark basalt running through red granite rocks are the dominant features of this “road less traveled” in Acadia National Park. Pines, birch, spruce, cedar, cherry, alder, mountain ash, and maples forest the land. There are numerous coves, inlets and islands. And your private room, shared bath, room and board and instruction are just $1150.

Some of last year’s participants asked for more surf, so I went up to Acadia and got them more surf. But they won’t get crowds; Schoodic is the quiet side of this monumentally popular park.

My long-term monitor, Sandy Quang, will not be with us at Acadia this year. She has finished her MA in art history and is working at Christie’s in New York this week, the beginning of her career in curating art. We will enjoy the time we have left with her here in Rochester while knowing that she’s on to bigger and better things. Sandy has studied on and off with me for ten years, and it’s a bittersweet parting. “You give them roots and you give them wings,” someone remarked to me last week. One thing I’m sure of: Sandy will be a painter for the rest of her life.

Stacey painting on a floating dock last summer.

Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochure here.

February 20, 2015

Changing visions

At the Milliner’s Shop, Edgar Degas, between 1905 and 1910.

Stanford opthamologist Michael Marmor has written two books on eye disease and famous artists. He focuses on Edgar Degas and Claude Monet and raises the question of whether their declining eyesight materially changed their painting.

Degas suffered retinal disease as he aged and Monet had cataracts. (While cataracts are easily repaired in the 21st century, retinal disease is a trickier process.)

Woman with Loose Red Hair, Edgar Degas, undated

Marmor used Photoshop to blur and reduce saturation in some of the artists’ later work to give some sense of what they might have seen.

“These simulations may lead one to question whether the artists intended these late works to look exactly as they do,” said Marmor, who concluded that “these artists weren’t painting in this manner totally for artistic reasons.”

Water Lilies, Claude Monet, painted between 1917-19, when his cataract process was well underway.

No artists achieve exactlywhat their mind’s eye lays out for them. The difference between intention and execution is the artifact the world understands as “style.” And no artist paints as he or she does totally for artistic reasons. The Impressionists, in particular, were painting in a period of rapid technological change. New pigments, the invention of the paint tube (leading to plein air painting), gaslight, chemical dyes which literally changed the way the world looked, industrial air pollution and a host of other innovations affected their painting.

“Contemporaries of both have noted that their late works were strangely coarse or garish and seemed out of character to the finer works that these artists had produced over the years,” Marmor wrote.

The Rose Walk, Giverny, Claude Monet, painted from 1920–22, when his cataracts were overripe.

Of course many artists throw over the traces in their old age. It’s the “I don’t give a #$%” phase, where all the aspirations and conventions which have guided one’s work over decades suddenly become tiresome and one just sublimates oneself in the paint. May I live long enough to experience it myself.

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

February 18, 2015

Gone shopping

A good studio-center location should have rocks and sea and sunsets…

Yesterday I wrote about my property search this week in Maine. What does this mean for my painting and my students?

I’ve worked with some fine properties over the years. Unfortunately, some have gone out of business and some have changed their business structure. Furthermore, it’s unfair to expect hotels to welcome paint and turps slopped on their meeting-room carpeting. A studio is a godsend in inclement weather and for critique or instruction. That is easy enough in Rochester, but has been difficult in Maine.

It should have lighthouses, like this one painted by Nancy Woogen at Marshall’s Point in 2013.

I’m not interested in running my own inn, so there has to be ample housing at all price points. It must be a short drive to great painting sites, because nobody wants to spend all day in the car. And the studio needs to be light, bright, and large enough to accommodate 12-14 students.

It should have quiet, wooded places.

Whether I’ve found that property remains to be seen. In the meantime, I’m having surgery on my eyes today, so all real estate transactions are on temporary hiatus.

And it should have boats in all states. These are by me.

An aside: my 18-year-old son toured properties with me, patiently analyzing and considering them. On the way home I attempted to stop at LL Bean’s outlet in Freeport, but five minutes in a clothing store and he was done. Men!

February 5, 2015

All good things

It’s helpful when you can stay on the right side of the road. It wasn’t alway possible.

As I toured the Institute grounds, the first fat flakes started to fall. I’d been warned that a significant storm was expected at midday and would move in fast. I don’t have studded snow tires; I don’t even have snow tires. For a few minutes, I thought I’d left it for too late.

The first sign of the weather changing was the wind picking up.

Still, Western New Yorkers are accustomed to snow. Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse have the highest snowfall of all American cities. Our storms are amplified by the open water of the Great Lakes.

Drift ice is among my favorite things.

Coastal Maine adds a fillip to the experience: a fine layer of ice under its snow. The first twelve miles of our trip was on back roads that wouldn’t see a salter or plow for a day or so. The Mainers might have been slithering sideways on the hills in their pickup trucks (which are notoriously bad on snow) but they were taking it in stride. So did my little Prius.

Snow-covered rocks off Blueberry Hill.

The northeast is having its second hard winter in a row. Very few people visit Maine in January, but it is beautiful. I no longer do much wintertime plein air work. Still, our world is lovely in the deep snow.

The open road doesn’t look too bad, does it? But there’s absolutely no traction and my poor little Prius was choosing its own route.

Ah, home sweet home…

February 3, 2015

Elvers and Pickled Wrinkles

Lobster traps in Corea, ME. This little burg will be on our agenda. It’s very much a working fishery town.

North of Ellsworth, ME, the Atlantic coast veers away into a different world. Gone are the clamshacks, the art galleries, and the coffeeshops geared toward visitors from away. We’re now in working Maine.

Stunning rock outcroppings.

I passed a sign reading, “Elvers bought here.” It turns out that an elver is not a juvenile elf but a juvenile eel. If I had a pickup truck full of them, I’d be a wealthy woman, even though the price has dropped from its 2012 high of $2600/lb. to a more rational $400-600/lb. Although I’ve never heard of the things, in 2012 the statewide harvest was valued at more than $38 million, making it the second-most lucrative catch in Maine’s fisheries industry.

Our home-away-from-home.

I couldn’t take photos of the insides of our accommodations—the water and power is off, and there’s antifreeze in the toilets. But they’re four-bedroom duplexes, originally designed as Navy barracks. There are kitchens and sufficient bathrooms, but there will be no 600-thread-count sheets at this workshop. For those of you who have visited Ghost Ranch at Abiquiu, NM, this is very much the northeastern equivalent. It’s all about the sky and the landscape.

Last summer, Schoodic Institute hosted a stone sculpture symposium. This is carved granite, in front of Morse Auditorium at the Institute.

Because we’re back of beyond, our workshop includes all meals. However, there is a good pub in Winter Harbor—the Pickled Wrinkle—that you should visit on your way home.

The Dining Hall is stripped for winter, but there’s a wonderful view.

Acadia seems to be everyone’s darling recently. See Good Morning America’s video, here, and USA Today’s reporting, here. In anticipation of increased visitation, the Park Service is busy upgrading the fabric of the place, including newly-paved roads. In a few years, you’ll be able to look down your nose and tell people, “I was there before it was cool.”

Very much working Maine.

(One of my students asked me whether there’s a ferry from Schoodic to Bar Harbor. There is; it leaves from Winter Harbor.)

January 30, 2015

Heading north in slow stages

Frozen paints…

…lead to a frozen sketch.

A week ago today, I drove up the Maine coast in slow stages. Maine is beautiful in winter, but it’s not the same kind of beauty as in August. Mid-coast Maine and Rochester have about the same winter temperatures. (As here, it gets colder the farther away from open water you go.) But there’s far more winter sun in Maine, and it creates the illusion of warmth.

Belfast tugs, last summer. That’s my student Brad Van Auken’s painting start.

I stopped in Belfast, ME for groceries, a gallery call, and a few moments of sketching at the harbor. Belfast often has tugs under repair in its boatyard, and it is a pretty place even in January. I pulled out my watercolor sketch kit and started a fast sketch of the pretty red boathouse. When my paints froze in the pan, it was a sign that I should move on.

North of Ellsworth, US 1 becomes a much quieter, more contemplative road.

After Ellsworth, ME (the turn-off to Bar Harbor), US 1 becomes a much quieter road, especially in winter. My goal was to arrive in Winter Harbor by dusk. After a quick trip out to Schoodic Point to catch the winter sun setting over the ocean, I settled in for the night.

Sun setting over Schoodic Point.

Not wanting to head into Winter Harbor for a pub meal, I was forced to cook myself dinner. I reminded myself that wine goes with everything, and soldiered on.

Wine goes with everything.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me on the Schoodic Peninsula in beautiful Acadia National Park in 2015 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops! Download a brochurehere.

January 23, 2015

Heading East Northeast

Winter on the Schoodic Peninsula.

Having finished my work in Waldoboro for the moment (whew!) I’m heading for Acadia today—right into a winter storm. This is the kind of vagary my southern friends have no experience with, but which we northerners anticipate. My car is not brilliant at bad roads, but I’m carrying a shovel, blankets, Clif bars, a candle and matches, and I can wait out any disasters.

The part of Acadia I’m heading to is that northernmost corner near Winter Harbor.

Acadia is the oldest national park east of the Mississippi, founded in 1919. The Schoodic Peninsula Historic District near Winter Harbor dates from 1929. Specifically I’m headed to this area, the northernmost part of the park.

In 2002, the National Park Service acquired the former naval base located on the Schoodic Peninsula and renovated it into the Schoodic Education and Research Center. This is where our 2015 workshop will be based.

Schoodic Peninsula surf.

My kit is in the back of my car, but the likelihood of painting in the teeth of a blizzard is slim. Still, I do have a watercolor set and if the visibility is not completely whited out, I expect I can do a study or two. If nothing else, I can check out the accommodations for my students.

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.

December 26, 2014

Better than a marked-down sweater, any day

Sea & Sky Workshop

August 9-14, 2015

Acadia National Park

Download a brochure.

If Santa Claus screwed up this Christmas, it’s up to you to remedy it, and I don’t mean by running down to the mall to score some great Boxing Day deals. By next summer, they’ll be a distant memory, but we’ll be gearing up to paint at Schoodic Point from August 9-14, 2015

You’ve got less than a week to get the $125 early-bird discount. Four slots of the twelve are already filled, but I DO want to be able to pass on these savings to you. And I can’t do that if I don’t have your registration in hand by January 1.

Corinne at Owl’s Head in 2013.

I spend a great deal of time stalking and bagging perfect venues for my workshops. I’m really excited about this one. In 2014, we painted the ‘quaint’ Maine coastline, along the sheltering coast of Penobscot Bay. This year, we’re going for the thundering, open ocean.

Schoodic Point is far from the hustle of Bar Harbor, but it is has the same dramatic rock formations, pounding surf, and stunning mountain views that make Acadia a worldwide tourist destination.

The places we’ll go!

Open sea, stunning views of Cadillac Mountain, and veins of dark basalt running through red granite rocks are the dominant features of this “road less traveled.” Pines, birch, spruce, cedar, cherry, alder, mountain ash, and maples forest the land. There are numerous coves, inlets, islands, and lighthouses.

Here is the brochure. Here is the registration form. I’m off to Philly for the weekend, but take a moment to sit down and send your registration form in. I promise you it will be a lot more satisfying than a new sweater set in 2014’s color of the year.