Sometimes you really do have to suffer for your art

I need to get outside or my brushwork gets too fussy.

Harkness Brook, oil on canvas with a splotch or two of snow, by Carol L. Douglas.

After I taught in Tallahassee in November, it took me a few weeks to acclimate myself to the temperature here in Maine. I expected that. I didnā€™t expect the same thing when I got home from Wyoming this week. It was warmer than usual there, and now the entire country has settled into the winter deep freeze.

Here in Maine, I usually spend a few hours a day outside. At dawn I hike up to the summit of Beech Hill. That gets the blood flowing for the day. At midday I go out again, either to the post office or on another off-road hike. I almost always get my 10,000 steps in without being aware that Iā€™m ā€˜exercisingā€™ or that itā€™s cold outside.

The wind-sculpted summit of Beech Hill.

But after Iā€™ve been on the road, Iā€™m always miserable the first few days back. ā€œMy everything hurts,ā€ I complained yesterday. Iā€™d been sitting behind the wheel of my new truck for a week, driving. At my age, I decondition far more quickly than I did at twenty.

My limit for sustained outdoor activity is 10Ā°F. Below that, itā€™s just too much work to stay warm. Luckily, I live right on the coast, where extreme cold is unusual. That ocean just beyond my backyard acts like a massive heatsink, cooling us in the summer and warming us in the winter.

Snow at Highter Elevations (Downdraft Snow) by Carol L. Douglas

But I can be fooled, as I was on Monday. The nominal temperature was in the teens, but as I rounded the summit, I was hit square in the face by a bitter wind. The wind often picks up as the sun rises, and this one was fierce. By the time we were back to the car, even my little dogā€”seemingly impervious to the coldā€”was acting chilled.

Still, the snow is beautiful, hanging on every evergreen branch. ā€œYou want to paint?ā€ I texted a few of my buddies. Only Ken DeWaard was foolish enough to agree. Dressed in my long underwear, mittens, neck gaiter, heavy jacket, and hardiest boots, I drove out to meet him. It was absolutely awful, but we both did sketches that we liked. Meanwhile, Eric Jacobsenwas painting near the top of Beech Hill, and he did a fine painting. Thereā€™s a lesson in that, I think. Sometimes you really do have to suffer for your art.

Meanwhile, itā€™s continued to snow, and the temperature continues to drop. Iā€™m looking out at the gloaming wondering if I want to go out to paint again today. It all depends on the light.

Why do we do this, when we each have nice, toasty-warm studios in which we can paint? One paints differently in the studio from in the field. I need regular days of painting from life so that I remember what life looks like when I paint from photos. Without that, my brushwork gets too fussy.

Postscript: my student Yvonne Bailey posted the above photo on Facebook. She had rearranged her furniture and swapped her dogsā€™ crates around. Creatures of habit, they both insisted on returning to where they thought they belonged. Thereā€™s a lesson in that for us as well: itā€™s easy for us humans to get overly attached to our ā€˜placesā€™. Habit is good, but it can become a rut.