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Tag: schooner American Eagle

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My love affair with schooner American Eagle

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“You have a crush on every boat,” my husband once said. Of all the boats I’ve ever loved, schooner American Eagle is at the top of the list. She’s not the only windjammer I admire, or even the only windjammer I’ve painted. But I get to teach on her every year, she’s always in perfect nick and I never have to do any of the maintenance. That’s down to Captain John Foss, who restored her impeccably, and Captain Tyler King, who’s keeping up the good work.

A quick glimpse will tell you why we had no onboard electronics on this lovely old girl. I wish I still had her but, as they say, it’s complicated.

I grew up in western New York, where my family kept a 30′ wooden sloop, first at Buffalo on Lake Erie and then at Wilson on Lake Ontario. As a kid, I figured that since the Great Lakes are smaller than the ocean, they must be safer. It’s only been since I’ve moved to the Maine coast that I’ve realized how extreme the weather in my hometown of Buffalo is. The Great Lakes are prone to unpredictable squall lines, seiches, and storm surges. Electrical storms are very common, even in winter, when they create the phenomenon known as thundersnow. Periodically, the water in Lake Ontario turns over, making a noticeable, sudden change in the temperature that results in fog. The Great Lakes have heavy freighter traffic and fog can drop in an instant. It’s less nerve-wracking now, but in my youth “onboard electronics” were limited to running lights.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

On the other hand, the Great Lakes are consistently deep. If you can get out of the harbor channel without grounding yourself on last winter’s silt, you’re unlikely to hit anything submerged. That’s different from the Maine coast, where rocks stick inconveniently out of the water, or worse, not quite out of the water. When I first sailed on schooner American Eagle, I told Captain John that the thing that gave me pause about potting around in the ocean by myself is not knowing what was on the bottom. “Lobster traps, pretty much,” he laughed. And sailors today all use depth finders, which take the sport out of holing one’s hull.

However, the weather on the Maine Coast is simply not as foul as it is on Lake Ontario. (A friend who lives in Scotland tells me that Rochester is more dreich in late fall and winter than is Edinburgh.) It rains less here, and there are fewer storms.

I see boats as powerful symbols of the human condition. We’re always either sailing into trouble or getting ourselves out of it. Breaking Storm, above, is about the latter, and I’ve got a painting of the windjammer Angelique on my easel that’s about the former. (Sorry about that, Captains Dennis and Candace!)

American Eagle rounding Owls Head, 6×8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 unframed includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

Breaking Storm is my favorite of all my schooner American Eagle paintings, but I realize it may be too large and expensive for some people. That’s why I painted American Eagle rounding Owls Head, just 6X8. It’s softer and more suggestive than the larger painting, and there’s no sense that the storm has abated.

Of course, if you sail with us in September, you can paint your own version of sailing on the Maine coast. But if you can’t go adventuring with us, a painting is every bit as wonderful.

My 2024 workshops:

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Why we buy art supplies

Nova Scotia Sunrise, 12X16, oil on canvasboard, $1159 unframed. The Bay of Fundy has high bluffs, but I can’t imagine a storm surge coupled with forty-foot tides.

My Zoom class was discussing ways to manage anxiety. “Is buying more and more art supplies a sign of painting anxiety?” Pam asked.

“Don’t judge me!” someone else laughed.

I’m cleaning my studio involuntarily. As of last night, Hurricane Lee was on track to nick Cape Cod and graze Maine on its way to the Bay of Fundy. Unless that hurricane does a 180, we’re due for, at a minimum, high seas. Normally I’d sit back with a glass of wine and watch the fun, but I’m supposed to be teaching watercolor aboard schooner American Eagle starting on Saturday.

The students in my watercolor workshop aboard schooner American Eagle get QoR paints, Princeton brushes, and Strathmore paper. You can’t begin to learn with bad materials, but nor do you need a surfeit of stuff.

“The time for taking all measures for a ship’s safety is while still able to do so,” wrote Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (in response to three ships of the Pacific Fleet being lost in a typhoon). “Nothing is more dangerous than for a seaman to be grudging in taking precautions lest they turn out to have been unnecessary.”

Captain Tyler King and reservationist Shary Cobb Fellows have roughed out a plan. We’ll stay in port another day, and the first day of the workshop will take place in my studio. Nobody needs to be bobbing around Penobscot Bay in high seas, including the boat herself, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Every September, my studio is, frankly, a mess. I’ve been using it as a staging ground all season. It’s not just cluttered, it’s filthy, and there’s no way I’m hosting a workshop in it the way it looks right now.

That led me to sorting art supplies. I’m a reformed shopper; I haven’t bought a tube of paint or a canvas that I haven’t needed for twenty years. But before that, oh, boy, did I have a problem.

The deck of the schooner American Eagle. We’ll get out there, but probably not on Saturday.

Added to that, people tend to leave things at my studio and they give me art supplies as gifts. Some are extremely useful, like the Rosemary brushes my students bought me a few years ago, or the charcoal Karen brought me from France. Others, not so much, but I’m very sentimental.

In my experience, people tend to buy unnecessary materials for three reasons:

  1. In lieu of actually buckling down to do the work. I’m not pointing fingers here, but a man I know always makes the first step of any job going to Home Depot. He may or may not get any farther.
  2. Because they’re frightened of actually painting. Shopping for art supplies is a lot easier than facing their fears.
  3. To experiment. That’s why I have a tube of liquid graphite, oversized chalks and various colored pens in my studio-none of which I use very often. On the other hand, that’s also why I have watercolor pencils, which I find indispensable.
Breaking storm, 48X30, oil on canvas, $5,579 framed. I know I just used this painting in my blog, but it seems somehow too appropriate, as that’s American Eagle rounding Owl’s Head.

I  freely distribute my supply lists for watercolors, oils, pastels and acrylics. If you stick with them, you can paint for the lowest cost possible. Still, I get many letters from experienced painters, like L, who wrote, “I’m always trying to decide if I am missing some beautiful mixes by limiting my colors too much.” That’s FOMO, or fear of missing out.

You can spend hundreds of dollars buying paint and supplies that are useless or redundant. My online class, The Perfect Palette, is meant to steer oil painters away from this. But perhaps even more important is to analyze why you’re going shopping in the first place.

My 2024 workshops: