Tag: plein air painting

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Forest bathing or plein air painting?

Yesterday morning, as I waited for my plein air workshop students at Wahconah Falls State Park, I read this post about shinrin-yoku, or ‘forest bathing.’ That lasted until I realized the absurdity of sitting in nature reading on my phone about the benefits of sitting in nature.

Forest bathing is the practice of immersing yourself in a forest or other natural setting, not for exercise, but to take in the atmosphere with all your senses. I hate the term “mindfulness,” but that’s what it’s all about. The forest is your therapist, and it works for free. Forest bathing and plein air painting are very similar in goals and outcome.

Wahconah Falls State Park in Massachusetts has countless beautiful vistas.

The benefits of forest bathing

According to those who practice forest bathing, time in nature lowers the stress hormone cortisol, slows your heart rate, and helps your nervous system shift into a calmer state. Time spent in nature alleviates depression. Practitioners report they think more clearly and feel more creative after time in the woods.

This may be because trees release airborne compounds called phytoncides. These are natural antimicrobial chemicals that plants use to protect themselves. Breathing them in may enhance immune responses, reduce stress, and improve mood.

The air in the forest is generally cleaner than in urban areas. Gentle movement in oxygen-rich air can lower blood pressure and improve heart rate.

Forest bathing cultivates awareness of the sights, sounds, smells, and textures around you, building a deeper relationship with the natural world. Lower stress levels, more physical relaxation, and natural light exposure during the day can all help improve the quality of your sleep.

Cheryl painting the falls themselves.

How do you do it?

Choose a natural area where you can wander without constant traffic noise or interruptions. Experts say to leave your phone behind, but that strikes me as dangerous; silencing it is enough. Forget about mileage or steps, and move at a slow pace. This allows you to engage your senses, to notice colors, shapes, and tiny details. Listen for bird calls, cicadas (which we heard yesterday) or the sound of water. An often-overlooked sense in the forest is smell. It’s one of my favorite things about walking in the woods.

Forest bathing experts tell us to stop periodically and be utterly still. Let your thoughts drift. Minimally, you want to spend 20–30 minutes, but ideally, seek an hour or more of woodland time. Forest bathers say to end this with gratitude; I certainly feel that after my daily hikes.

Bonnie forest bathing, er, plein air painting.

How does this differ from plein air painting?

It doesn’t. Plein air painting and forest bathing work on your body and mind in surprisingly similar ways.

They both slow you down, helping you absorb details of place without rushing. In plein air painting, you can easily focus on one scene for hours. You shift from going somewhere to just being in nature.

In both, you’re hearing birds, feeling the sun on your skin, smelling grass or salt air. A painter’s heightened visual observation parallels a forest bather’s full sensory awareness.

Forest bathing invites you to simply be in nature. Plein air painting almost forces you to engage with that, because you are concentrating deeply on the environment.

Both activities reduce stress and improve mood. The creative act of painting can also trigger “flow,” where time disappears and you feel deeply satisfied.

Ultimately, both deepen your relationship with the natural world. You give your time and attention, and in return nature offers beauty, calm, and inspiration.

And even I did a quick painting. (Photo courtesy Cheryl Shanahan)

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Monday Morning Art School: choosing a plein air easel or pochade box

The Gloucester-style easel is great for park-n-paint but I really can’t carry mine very far.

I finished last week’s workshop with a plein air easel show-and-tell at my gallery, because a recurring question is, “what kind of easel is best for me?”

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, so before you start looking, ask yourself these questions:

  • What size paintings do you typically do outdoors? There are maximum sizes for each plein air easel, and they don’t perform well once you exceed that.
  • What medium do you use—oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache or pastel?
  • Do you prefer fast setup and light weight, or something more stable in high winds?
  • How do you usually travel to paint?
    • Park-n-paint, where you paint near or out of your car.
      Backpacking or hiking to painting sites.
      Flying to workshops.
  • How frequently will you paint outdoors? A daily painter needs a more stable plein air easel than a once-a-month painter.
  • How handy are you? Paint boxes are simple; a good craftsman can build or modify most designs. However, if you don’t know which end of the screwdriver means business, you’re better off buying one off the shelf.

Remember, all plein air easels and pochade boxes are compromises, which is why I’ve ended up with so darn many of them.

How not to treat your Mabef M-27 watercolor easel…

Watercolors vs. oil painting

Watercolor painters who work small may need no plein air easel at all; they can do just fine with a folding chair and their work on their lap. If you plan to work larger, a pivot head is important. There are a number of options for this, including the Mabef M-27 field easel (here at Dick Blick, here at Amazon).  It can hold a full sheet of watercolor paper on a Gatorboard support and the angle adjusts very quickly. It’s also usable for other mediums, but there are easier plein air easels for oils and acrylics. Also, balancing a palette on its arms is sometimes an exercise in frustration.

Pivot heads are not just for watercolor

There are several other pivot-head systems on the market, and I generally like them because they divorce the support from the often-heavy paint box. The Leder easel at $159 (not including the tripod) is reasonably priced for a solid, stable, painting system. It can hold a canvas up to 24″ tall, which is large enough for most plein air work. You must buy your own tripod and paint box, but that has some advantages. You’re not hauling around a heavy wooden box, because you can pair it with a Masterson Sta-Wet palette box, which is far lighter. It’s also a great system for pastels, because it allows you to use your existing pastel box. In fact, you can flip between media quickly. (Ed says that if you use the code Carol10, you’ll get a 10% discount.)

Terrie Perrine’s pastel box on her Leder easel. Building your own box is a great solution if you’re handy with tools.

Guerrilla Painter boxes are rock solid but too heavy for me (I just gave my last one to a friend). They do make a fabulous support, the No. 17 Flex Easel. It still requires a tripod with a pivot head and some kind of box, but En Plein Air Pro makes an excellent shelf that will hold your stuff.

Another option in this family is the Coulter Art Box, which has a pivot head and a box with a wraparound support that grabs the legs of your tripod.

This is where being handy is helpful; many artists have modified or built flat paint boxes at a fraction of the cost of an off-the-shelf version. I built mine.

Pochade boxes

There’s so much variety in pochade boxes that I can’t possibly mention every choice. For most fieldwork I use an Easy L box, which I have in three sizes, including an 8X10 that’s light enough to backpack. I bring an Easy L box when I’m flying.

The New Wave u.go pochade is a simple, elegant design, but even the largest is really only suitable for smaller work. Its mixing area is very shallow; that’s a problem if you use lots of paint. However, the palette does lift out so you can freeze it, and it’s lightweight.

Strada makes the only aluminum pochade boxes that I know of. That’s a pity, because aluminum is less prone to moisture damage than wood. It doesn’t result in much weight savings, however.

About your tripod

A good carbon-fiber tripod and a ball head with a quick-release plate may set you back more than your pochade box. The good news is that they’re lightweight, stable, and almost indestructible. I have only one; I swap it out every time I change pochade boxes.

My students from my plein air workshop last week. Front row: Phoenix Barra, Aurise Randall, David Griffin. Back row: Helena Van Hemmen, Jeanne-Marie Van Hemmen, Lori Galan, Yves Roblin, Marlene Van Aardt, Amy Sirianni, LuAnn Dunkinson, Tim Moran, and me. Missing: Rachel Houlihan. (Photo courtesy of Bill Marr.)

Gloucester-style easel

For years, I used a cheap knock-off of the Gloucester easel. Mine finally snapped in a high wind. The replacement was so warped that I returned it. If you want this style easel, you need the Take-It Easel.

The Gloucester-style easel is invaluable for large work or windy days, but it’s too heavy for me to carry very far. Weight is the big reason so many artists use the park-n-paint approach to plein air. It’s easy, but it’s limiting.

What not to buy

I’ve written about how Google drove me toward inexpensive and fatally-flawed Meeden pochade boxes. It’s always frustrating to watch students struggling with terrible equipment..

Many people have been given a French box easel by loving friends or relatives. If you have one, by all means use it, but don’t voluntarily inflict one on yourself. They’re heavy and difficult to set up. Pochade boxes are lighter and nimbler.

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Why don’t I teach shorter painting workshops?

Camden Harbor from Curtis Island, oil on canvas, $2782 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental United States.

I’m teaching an advanced painting workshop this week. Today is the third day, and when my students departed yesterday, they all looked a little tired. OK, a lot tired. It’s a lot to work from 9 to 4 in open air, while trying to integrate new concepts.

A fellow teacher once told me that she had been asked to compress a four-week beginner course into two days. “I think it’s a disservice,” she said. “That’s a lot of information to compress into a much shorter time. So, either it’s a very shallow dive or there’s so much information compressed so tightly that half of it gets lost.”

I’m terrible at taking pictures while teaching, but one of my students set up in the shade of an old schooner, and I thought her easel looked darn cute there.

I am often asked about shorter painting workshops as well. They fit neatly into a weekend and the cost is lower, so they’re easier to sell. If they’re subject-based, like ‘painting sunsets,’ they can work because these painting workshops are inherently shallow. They work best for people who already know the rudiments of painting; otherwise, they’re a bit too much like sip-and-paints.

But two or three days are insufficient when it’s a question of really developing style, color fluency, composition and form. And if you understand these concepts, you don’t need a special painting workshop on sunsets or water; you have the tools to paint anything you want.

Downtown Rockport, 14X18, oil on archival canvasboard, framed, $1594 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What can go wrong? A lot.

Basic protocols for watercolor and oils run to about seven discrete steps, depending on how you break them down. Here are, roughly, the steps for oil painting:

  1. Set up your palette with all colors out, organized in a useful manner.
  2. Do a value drawing.
  3. Crop your drawing and identify and strengthen big shapes and movements.
  4. Transfer the drawing to canvas with paint as a monochromatic grisaille.
  5. Underpaint big shapes making sure value, chroma and hue are correct.
  6. Divide big shapes and develop details.
  7. Add highlights, detail and impasto as desired.

Let’s just consider #2. It’s almost useless for me to just tell you to do a sketch. In fact, if I did that, you’d have to wonder why you didn’t just draw on the canvas instead. You need insight into what you’re looking for, what makes a good composition, and different ways to do that preparatory composition.

Maynard Dixon Clouds, 11X14, oil on archival canvas board, $869 includes shipping in continental US.

I can (and sometimes do) rattle off a lecture on these points, but that is the just the start of the process of discovery. Unfortunately, in a two-day painting workshop, that’s about all the time we’d have for the step many artists consider most crucial to the development of a good painting. You, the student, then go home and consult your notes. They become a slavish list of dos-and-don’ts, rather than a framework for a deeper understanding.

It’s far better that I start with an exercise that allows you to build understanding of composition on your own. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between a book and interactive teaching. It’s why people take painting workshops in the first place.

That kind of teaching takes time.

Arthur Wesley Dow, the popularizer of Notan, had his students work for weeks on line before they eventually graduated to masses and then finally to greyscale and color. His students included Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Charles Burchfield, and other 20th century art luminaries, so he was definitely onto something. Learning to paint properly takes time.

This is a revision of a post from 2022.

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Monday Morning Art School: preparing for a plein air painting workshop

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Plein air painting workshops? I’ve taught a few (gazillion). Like most good instructors, I’ll send you supply lists, clothing suggestions, and travel instructions before we set out. But there are intangibles that will help you have a better time.

Plan to be flexible. In March when I drove over the mountain to Sedona, AZ, the last thing I expected to see were inches of snow on the ground. But weird stuff happens. Weather, light and circumstances change. Adaptability is a great skill, and rapid change is what makes landscape painting both the most difficult and the most rewarding of all the painterly disciplines.

You can never plan for every eventuality—for example, my rental car from Phoenix had neither snow tires nor a snow brush. But if you set out with a broad range of stuff you’re likely to need, more or less you’ll have enough stuff to make a stab at almost everything. And your teacher or peers will have whatever you need to fill in the rest.

Sunset over Cadillac Mountain, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling.

Last year at Sea & Sky at Schoodic we knew we had a Nor’easter bearing down on us on the last day. We coped by preloading extra painting time earlier in the week. Everyone got lots of painting and learning in. We had the added bonus of watching a wicked storm crossing Schoodic Point, although there was no paint sticking to paper or canvas in that weather. Then there was the time Cassie Sano saw a bear.

Embrace imperfection: If you’ve ever wanted to learn to paint loose, plein air is your best teacher. You simply can’t fuss over the details in the field, especially in half-day exercises.

I tell my students they’re not in class to make masterpieces but to learn. Ironically, that’s when they often do their best work.

Ask questions: This is a hard one for me, because I’m not one for group sharing, myself. But instructors are there to help, and your peers often have valuable insights. Ask your teacher lots of questions. I’m usually grateful for them, because they reveal places where my explanations have been fuzzy or weak.

Surf’s Up is 12X16, on a prepared birch surface. $1159 includes shipping and handling in the Continental US.

Why should you take a plein air workshop?

Painting outdoors forces artists to observe light, color and form more carefully and accurately than working from photos. It’s far harder, and it teaches you to edit on the fly, so when you do work in the studio you aren’t slavishly copying your reference pictures.

Plein air challenges you to simplify and focus on essentials—composition, light, and value—leading to noticeable skill improvement.

Natural surroundings also spark fresh ideas and emotional responses that don’t happen in the studio. There are people joined by a common reverence towards nature, who are (overwhelmingly, in my experience) supportive, intelligent, and helpful.

Painting in public can be intimidating at first, but it builds confidence in your process and helps you become more resilient as an artist.

Lastly, we teach workshops in places that are beautiful—in my case, Maine, the Berkshires and Sedona—and wonderful to paint.

The Surf is Cranking Up, 8X16, oil on linenboard, $903 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

And sometimes there’s profit in it

Mark Gale sent me this over the weekend: “As I was prepping paintings for a pop-up market, I found myself including a couple from a painting series I took with Carol Douglas. Then I realized I have sold paintings from in-person workshops and other Zoom series with Carol. Yes, she will make you a better painter. She also has an uncanny ability to deliver intangible extras. Students from across the country meet, form relationships and stay in touch. Carol’s alums have an enduring community. And sometimes, that piece you thought was just a class exercise, ends up in the hands of a happy customer.”

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Surf’s up!

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I always mean to go to Perkin’s Cove for its annual plein air event, for no other reason than to see my friends and paint along the Marginal Way. (I could do that any day of the week, but sometimes you need a spur.) This year, I finally fit it into my schedule. Of course, it wasn’t until I was a few minutes out of Ogunquit that I remembered to call one of those friends: my buddy Bruce McMillan. As we were talking, I passed him on the roadside, hauling his kit to the Marginal Way.

Surf’s Up is 12X16, on a prepared birch surface. $1159 includes shipping and handling in the Continental US.

Me, living in the past? No way!

Ogunquit is a place of fond memory for me. I used to take my kids there every other summer when they were small. They’d spend the day paddling in the surf, eat pink hot dogs at Barnacle Billy’s, and then we’d walk along the Marginal Way in the evening. We’d stay with my friend Jan. These days, I drive past her lane and avert my eyes; where there were once small, rustic, seasonal cottages, there are now million-dollar vacation homes.

When my twins were about six, I took them out on boogie boards to a sandbar on the north end of Ogunquit’s ‘puddle’. We had fun playing in the surf, until it was time to go back. The tidal pool that had been ankle deep when we went out was now over my head, and the surf was rolling. I’m a strong swimmer and both girls were good swimmers themselves, but it was all I could do to get them back to shore. I woke up in a cold sweat about it for months afterward. And Ogunquit’s beaches make rip currents and undertows when they feel like it.

Bruce took this delightful picture of me painting.

Look to the sea

I have been back to the Marginal Way to paint occasionally, and when I face toward the sea nothing has changed. Nor will it, if Nature has its way.

Bruce painted spray in watercolor and I painted it in oils. Every few minutes we would stop and stare openmouthed at the towering surf. It cut down on our productivity, but it was a transcendent experience.

Come see me tomorrow at 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME, from 5-7 PM. I promise I’m not cooking.

Come see me this evening

I’m not cooking, for which you can all be grateful, but my husband has offered to make his signature bean dip.

Grand opening
Carol L. Douglas Gallery at Richards Hill
Friday, September 13, 5-7 PM
394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME 04856

For more details, see here.

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Nothing lasts forever

The pine nursery (Madawaska Pond), 12X16, oil on canvasboard, available.

Beth Carr, who is both my student and my friend, is planning a trip to Jay, in Essex County, NY. As she knows the Adirondacks were once my Happy Hunting Grounds, she asked me for recommendations of places to paint. I suggested a few, but more importantly, I introduced her to the doyenne of Adirondack plein air painting, Sandra Hildreth.

Two years ago, Sandy took me for a long ride into the forest—north from Paul Smiths, NY and then eight miles down a rough logging track. From there we shouldered our backpacks and hiked a scant eighth of a mile to a point overlooking Madawaska Pond. The money shot (of course) was a view of Buck Mountain in the distance. But what interested me most was the tree nursery in the foreground.

I’d like to go back. Alas, Sandy tells me the road is washed out. I guess nothing lasts forever.

I’ve painted many things that are now gone, including the beaver dam at Quebec Brook and the lobster pound at Tenants Harbor. I suppose I could cultivate a Buddhist detachment, but usually these losses surprise me and make me sad.

The upside to this is that rotten times don’t last forever, either. Like everyone, I occasionally get into a funk where I wonder why I ever thought I could paint. I’ve been around long enough to realize that these too shall pass. I don’t particularly like Ecclesiastes; it’s depressing. However, Solomon is right in saying that there’s a time for everything. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même.

Which leads me full circle to those baby trees—I wonder how they’re doing?

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Landscape paintings that are signposts

Autumn Farm, Evening Blues, oil on canvasboard, $1449 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I don’t scrub out paintings I don’t like. Often, they are signposts for where I’m heading. This painting is slightly different, because I liked it when it was done, but it was different from much of my work at the time. However, it fits squarely into my oeuvre today.

“A real artist doesn’t need an eraser.”

I don’t know where this comment came from, but it’s destructive. Yes, I own an eraser and I use it all the time. That’s why I draw on Bristol instead of soft paper. ‘Real’ artists work and rework subject matter constantly.

What I think it is supposed to mean is, “don’t mind the imperfections and don’t overwork your paintings to get rid of all their perceived flaws.” I do agree with that. Just as we’ve blurred the line between real human bodies and the airbrushed bodies of influencers, we’ve all gotten used to online images with the weak spots airbrushed out. That can make our own efforts feel wonky to us.

Signposts

Fifteen years ago, I lived in Rochester, NY. It’s a city of indirect light. That tends to make for grey paintings. Today I live on the Maine coast, where things are much brighter. My palette has shifted to far brighter color.

When I first started moving in this direction, the heightened color felt garish. Today it feels natural. But to get to that point, I had to let go when things looked awkward. I’m talking here about color, but it’s true of every aspect of painting, from composition to drafting to mark-making. You won’t know if it’s a mistake until you spend time with it.

Is there such a thing as realism in landscape painting?

Gustave Courbet is considered the father of French realism, but it’s hard to not see the editorial in his work. The same is true of the English romantic John Constable and the American realist George Bellows. In fact, I can’t think of a single great landscape painter whose inner vision didn’t override what his eyes saw.

That’s a good thing, which is why we shouldn’t be too quick to snuff out what we see.

Horses

Some of my four-legged friends from Undermountain Farm in Lenox, MA

If you’ve spent any time with me, you know I love boats and the sea. I’m also rather partial to horses, which is why I set up to do this painting. In the distance, coming down the hill, is the Radnor Hunt, the oldest continuously-operated hunt club in the United States. Mostly, hounds and horses just milled around as they lost the scent, which is a far cry from what I thought the hunt was all about.

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Things that are real

American Eagle, painted from the deck during one of my schooner watercolor workshops.

For a certified geriatric, I’m pretty good at the internet, but it is demanding. There’s a constant encroachment of synthetic experience, in the form of AI and enhanced photographs. There are scammers. Moreover, I feel obliged to read the news, which has become yet another virtual experience. Meanwhile, the sun is shining and the soft ocean breezes are blowing, but too many of us are in our air-conditioned rooms experiencing life vicariously.

I see a steady shrinking of real, physical, authentic experiences. Sometimes I worry that reality is downright endangered.

A painting student from an Adirondack workshop, with her perspective drawing carefully at hand. She’s coming to my Schoodic workshop next month.

Some of the things you can’t get from AI

Paintings They’re tangible, tactile, dimensional, handmade objects, which is why they don’t lend themselves to being made into NFTs.

Nature. My photos have been viewed on Google more than 66,000 times. I think 90% of them were taken on Beech Hill. As many pictures as I take, I know my plein air workshop students experience it in a way no photo can recreate. It is never the same two days running.

The ocean. Penobscot Bay is a constantly-changing sensory delight, with cool breezes, the tang of saltwater, and a smattering of offshore islands that sparkle in the sun. Even the best photo can only capture the visual, and then incompletely. Those other sensations are not reproducible.

You can see the beauty in this photo, but you can’t experience the moment except by being there.

This boat, which has been sailing the Gulf of Maine for close to a century. It’s ecotourism at its best, and you don’t experience the ocean as fully in any other vessel. For one thing, it’s quiet.

Little villages. Yes, Maine villages are photogenic, but they’re also communities. Painting them from a picture is one thing; painting them in real life means you learn about the place. For example, on Thursday, Jeanne-Marie and I learned who owned that magnificent yellow house she was painting and the likelihood it would go on the market. We also learned who’s doing what at the Camden Garden Club Tour tomorrow. Then she walked downtown and got coffee at Zoot, which is almost next door to where my paintings are hanging at Lone Pine Realty. You feel the difference in a small town.

Students in my watercolor workshop aboard schooner American Eagle.

Real time. That’s sometimes fast, and sometimes slow, but it’s dictated by reality, not video. Plein air painting can challenge you to work quickly and decisively or it can allow you to relax into the place. It’s simply less structured than virtual reality.

A sense of place. Every time I say goodbye to a plein air workshop group, I find myself telling them to move to midcoast Maine. We’ve developed deep relationships in the week we’ve painted together, and I want them all to be my neighbors.

Myriad viewpoints. There’s never just one view; there are multiple compositions at almost every place. That and the constantly-changing light are inspiring in a way that AI or photographs can never be. They force you to think in a way that copying a photo never can.

We were painting at Owl’s Head and suddenly the fog dropped and everything in the world changed.

Know what’s real? Plein air workshops.

I love teaching on Zoom for many reasons, but the most important is that my Zoom students make very fast progress. However, I also need to teach plein air workshops too; that’s a soul call, not a financial one.

Even though I have very close friendships in cyberspace, the human connection in a workshop is different. I saw Sharon of right-angle fame yesterday. We had a brief, warm and charming conversation that made me smile all day.

A note: I have a few openings for Sea & Sky at Acadia National Park, but if you want to take that workshop and stay at the Schoodic Institute, the drop-dead deadline is this coming Monday. I have a little more flexibility for commuters, but I don’t know how likely it is that you’ll find a rental this late in the season.

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Keeping my cool

Bonnie watercoloring on Pearl Street in Camden.

I’ve been teaching a plein air workshop this week, and the air is unusually hot and heavy for Maine. Being a lifelong resident of the northeast, I don’t like heat and humidity. In addition, I promised my students from Virginia that it would be cool here, and Mother Nature made a liar out of me. (To be fair, it’s still cooler than Virginia.)

Years ago, my friend S— moved to Maine from California with the assistance of her mother. She loved her new house until the first really hot day. She flipped the switch on her thermostat to ‘cool’ and waited. And waited. “Mom,” she wailed, “the air conditioning is broken!”

Beth and Libby painting on Beauchamp Point.

“Welcome to the real world,” her mom said. “You don’t have air conditioning.” My California born-and-bred friend had no idea that there were houses in America without it.

Yves painting a house in Camden.

Our old New England farmhouse doesn’t have it, and I generally don’t care. It’s insulated, which helps a lot. We use fans, we cross ventilate, and shower in cool water. That works great for in the house. But outdoors is a different story.

Outdoors, hydration is key, but I couldn’t keep ahead of it this week, as hard as I tried.

Jeanne-Marie achieving perfect balance on a rock.

Student show, Friday July 12, from 5-7 PM

Today will be warm but breezy, so it should be perfect weather to come by my gallery for a show of my students’ work from this week.

We are located at 394 Commercial Street, Rockport. If you’ve ever wondered what kind of  painting gets done in a workshop, this is an excellent opportunity to find out.

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What to wear to an art show

Prom Shoes 1, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

I own one skirt and one dress, but I must combine painting and public events over the next ten days. I Googled what to wear to an art show to give myself ideas. The consensus was:

Men should wear a blazer or sport coat, dress shirt, nice trousers or dark jeans, and polished shoes. For contemporary work, they should wear trendy shirts, slim-fit pants or jeans, and stylish sneakers or shoes.

Women should wear a chic dress, skirt or stylish pantsuit, paired with heels or fashionable flats. For contemporary work, they should wear fashion-forward dresses or outfits, statement accessories, and stylish shoes. I don’t own any stylish shoes.

Libby and Sharon discussing the Neolithic stone circle at Beech Hill (okay, I made that up).

This all reminds me of Chelsea back in the day. My goddaughter and I had gone to Brad Marshall’s and Cornelia Foss’ openings, and were catching our breath on the street. We started to count how many people were wearing those heavy black plastic glasses that were then so cutting-edge. We stopped at a hundred. These people were deeply concerned with what to wear to an art show. Being seen is some people’s raison d’etre.

In Maine, people are not such slaves to fashion. This is a state where we have flannel and Sunday-go-to-meetin’ flannel. At any rate, I don’t care what you wear, just mark these three dates on your calendar, and come out and support us.

I am very grateful to Coastal Mountain Land Trust for being so welcoming to my students.

Friday, July 12, 2024: Painting in Paradise student show, 5-7 PM

I’m teaching my first of this season’s workshops this week. Since my gallerage (my own coinage, and I like it) is now open, I will be showing their work on Friday evening from 5-7 PM.

The gallerage is located at 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, and we’d love to see you.

This group is keeping me alert, as they’re all very able. I go home every afternoon wondering how I’ll organize the next day’s material to keep them interested. (I never want anyone to go home feeling bored, or worse, ignored.)

If you’ve ever wondered what kind of painting gets done in a workshop, this is an excellent opportunity to find out.

Frequent hydration breaks are a must.

July 18, 2024: Camden Art Walk

Galleries and shops are open all through town. I’ll be at Lone Pine Realty, 19 Elm Street (next to Zoot Coffee). Last month’s Art Walk was rained out, and I went home with cookies, wine, and lemonade, none of which are on my diet. This month, don’t make me drink alone!

Tired painters heading down the hill.

July 19-21, 2024: Camden on Canvas

“Twenty-one notable New England landscape artists will paint en plein air.” I like repeating that, because I am one of those painters. We’ll be at sites in Camden and Rockport from Friday morning, July 19, to noon on Sunday, July 21. I haven’t decided exactly where I’ll paint, but I’ve narrowed it down to either Curtis Island (bring your dinghy) or Fernald’s Neck, unless I change my mind. You can find out exactly where I and the other artists are by visiting the Camden on Canvas Information Tent outside the library’s Atlantic Avenue entrance. Or check my Facebook or Instagram feeds.

The wet paintings exhibit will be open to the public at the historic Camden Amphitheatre, Sunday, July 21, from 1-3 PM. After that, there’s a reception and live auction from 4-6 PM. Tickets can be purchased online for $75 each or by calling 207-236-3440. Proceeds are shared equally between the Library’s Campaign for the Future and the artists.

Registration is now open for workshops in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

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