Tag: watercolor workshop

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Ecotourism and art

Painting aboard schooner American Eagle.

The track up Beech Hill is my daily morning routine. Occasionally I run across C-, who’s a co-owner of an elegant windjammer plying Penobscot Bay.

As you know, I teach two watercolor workshops each year aboard the schooner American Eagle. These workshops combine two things I love: sailing and painting. I get to do them without the responsibility of owning a boat, and my students get to do them without the responsibility of carrying their gear. (I supply it.)

I’m always thinking about ways to get more people excited about the combination of painting and sailing, because I can’t imagine anything better. Windjammers tend to attract older people, and that’s great, except that I don’t really understand why younger people don’t love them too.

“I had an idea that windjamming is the natural extension of eco-tourism,” I told C- the other day. “But I can’t figure out a way that you could stack 18 kayaks on your deck. They wouldn’t fit.”

“We don’t have to,” she pointed out. “The boats themselves are the original form of ecotourism.”

That’s my girl! American Eagle modeled for this painting, called Breaking Storm, 30X48, oil on linen, $5,579.00 including shipping in continental US.

What is ecotourism?

Ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education.”*

Schooners rely on wind power to glide silently through the sea; hence their moniker of ‘windjammers.’ We pass ledge and small islands where sea birds and eagles nest. I’ve seen sea otters, dolphins, and, memorably, a whale breaching off Rockland harbor last fall.

Because American Eagle carries several smaller vessels, including a seine boat, we can row to uninhabited islands, which we visit on a carry-in, carry-out basis. And those interested in studying quaint, endangered local cultures need look no farther than the lobstermen of coastal Maine.

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1,594.00 framed, includes shipping in the continental US. G**gle recently disapproved this image because it violates their policy. “Local legal requirements and safety standards (live animals).”

So why hasn’t the windjammer industry tapped into the $200 billion annual ecotourism market? I suspect it is because we believe that to see something exotic, you must go overseas. Having traveled extensively, I know this is nonsense. New Englanders and Nevadans may-nominally-share the same language, but we live in very different physical, economic and cultural communities. Ours is a vast country, twice as large as the EU. It has amazing diversity, including more than 95,000 miles of coastline.

Maine’s little piece of that includes 17 million acres of forestland and 3,500 miles of rocky coast. There are more than 3000 sea islands (and who knows how many on inland lakes). Only about 200 have more than four structures, meaning that the whole coastline is covered with forestland, bluffs, cliffs, and coves-and all the wildlife that goes with that.

As a painter, I find that irresistible, and I’m not alone. That’s why the Maine coast is infested with artists and galleries.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping in continental US. You can tell it was painted from a boat, rather than from shore, because the wave isn’t horizontal.

Where happiness lies

“A wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” wrote Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert. We’re happiest when we’re living in the moment, totally focused on what we’re doing. A wandering person, on the other hand, tends to be a sublimely happy soul. New experiences sharpen our focus in a way that material goods can’t. Soon after they’re purchased, our new car, phone or dress fade into the background; in fact, they’re only notable if there is a story to their acquisition.

Psychologists tells us that experiences bring people more enduring happiness than do possessions. Which, I suppose, is why I love the paintings I’ve done from the deck of American Eagle so much. They are treasured memories of happy days.

My 2024 workshops:

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A vacation from the news

A silvery sky off the stern of American Eagle.

“There have been few more momentous weeks in British history, or indeed in world history,” Bruce Anderson wrote in the Spectator. The Queen’s funeral coincided with the rout of Russia. I missed it all. I was coasting around Penobscot Bay on the schooner American Eagle, teaching watercolor, as I do twice a year.

I would normally have watched the Queen’s funeral, either in real time on the internet, or by flipping to the BBC every five minutes as I worked. I don’t watch television, but I do read voraciously. I was raised with The Buffalo News delivered every afternoon. Reading the news is a hard habit to break.

The sea is a strangely bonhomous place.

Back then, the news was structured. The front section gave us international and national news of import. The second section was local news. Then living, and then sports. After that came the auto ads and classifieds. All neatly segmented and focused on a local audience. Those of us who wanted more could take the New York Times on Sunday—back when it really was the nation’s ‘newspaper of record.’

One would occasionally get a ‘Florida man’ story—if it was sufficiently amusing—but paper and ink and the trucks to drive them around were expensive. Editors carefully selected what went in our local paper. Moreover, we read it and then we set it aside. We didn’t come back every hour for more.

We picnicked at Burnt Island.

Today my phone tells me ‘The Real Reason Why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Allegedly Went Back to Montecito Fuming’. I can read about a woman who faked her own kidnapping, a teenager shot to death by someone who thought the kid was a political extremist, another teen who died in a football game, or a Missouri mother looking for the remains of her murdered child. No wonder so many Americans take antidepressants. The world isn’t inherently any worse than it used to be, but all its ugliness is being served up to us constantly.

Out at sea, there is only spotty signal. (Unfortunately, it’s improving over time, as more islands get coverage.) My husband—an electrical engineer—once told me how he could fix that empty space. I looked at him horrified. “Don’t even think about it!” As long as our captain can communicate his position to other boats and the Coast Guard, that’s enough contact.

Heather fishing for mackerel long before breakfast.

While the world revolved without us this week, we painted. A Hurricane Island crew stopped and talked to us about their scallop research. We watched two bald eagles doing an amazing dance over a bit of ledge. A finback whale breached behind our stern. Porpoises did their lovely cartwheels. Seals were everywhere; so were schooling fish and the gulls that eat them.

Heather broke up her painting by fishing for mackerel. She caught five.

One of Heather's watercolors from off Northhaven Village.

It was unusually cold for September, but that didn’t make it bad weather. It mizzled, it fogged, the wind came up and went down, the sky was grey, then slate blue and violet, and finally brilliant blue. We picnicked on lobster, corn and fresh vegetables.

Finally, on our last morning, it came down in buckets. We watched it from beneath a deck awning while eating hot biscuits and frittata, wearing waterproofs.

An opening in the sky.

I can’t say why, but art is restricted by anxiety. Nervous tension stops us from reaching our real potential. There’s something about the ocean that releases that, and frees us from the need to produce something ‘great’.

By my last day aboard, I find that I never reach for my phone except to take photos. The real challenge is to bring that home, to stop being so plugged in. Yes, we need to be informed citizens, but a little bad news goes a long way.