Off to Pemaquid Point

 Monhegan From Pemaquid, 2012

I don't post nearly as often as I should. I haven't posted a word about the class I taught - and what it taught me. I will, pretty soon! But today, I'm packing for the retreat on Pemaquid Point. It's sponsored by the Pastel Painters of Maine, but they don't object to having me and my acrylics along for the ride. I went last year and it was wonderful: a little room in the Pemaquid Hotel and a big studio in the carriage house across the road.

What is it about artists - and writers - that we so often need to retreat from the world we usually inhabit? Our batteries seem to require a great deal of charging.

Speaking for myself, I find that working creatively both costs and pays a lot of personal energy. The getting-away thing is less about nurturing the creative mind than it is about shaking the Etch-A-Sketch to erase all the expectations that build up so quickly, about who we are and how we work, and how we allocate time.

So, I bid adieu for the weekend, to my family, and to the usual me. I'll open the windows, and let the sea breeze in.

"Can we come too?"

Bon Voyage

This week I'm saying farewell again, to an old friend who left a year ago for a better place. She was one of my oldest and dearest - someone I could call up and tell anything, and she'd laugh with me, or get mad at whoever had ticked me off, or tell me what crazy thing happened to her that was nearly as good - or as bad - as what happened to me. You know, one of those rare friends. And call her I did, often enough, because although we shared a dorm one year in college in another century, we spent most of our lives afterward living in different states. A year ago, breast cancer took her farther away than satellite technology can reach, but I still talk to her anyway.

Back in the day, she could have made phone yakking an Olympic event. She was a great talker, but one of the rare ones who's equally skilled at listening - and also one of the few people I've ever been able to talk to while painting.

This one, Coastline, came along during one of our conversations. a few years back. It's all about rolling waves and turbulence, the curvature of the earth that separates, but also holds us together, and fragile boundaries that never really manage to divide anything important. It's always been one of my favorites, and last week someone had the very good sense, in my humble opinion, to buy it. Now it's back in the studio for framing before heading out to its new home.

Bon voyage.

Dear Students,

The day is coming... I'm teaching my first acrylic painting class next Monday morning, March 25th, at Saccarappa Art collective in Westbrook, Maine. 

OK, if you read my blog entry about teaching painting, you know that I have been too scared to do this until now, even though I've taught other stuff and a good many people have told me they’d like to take a painting class from me.

Why? Well, I was raised to never tell others what to do, for one thing. (Although my kids would probably tell you I’m pretty good at telling them what NOT to do.) But especially when it comes to creative expression. I grew up in the freewheeling 1970s, when the country  was all you do your thing, and I’ll do mine, and there was no wrong way in art.

And actually, I still feel pretty much that way. If you want a teacher to tell you, “First do this, and then do that,” I’m sorry. I’m not going to be that teacher. I’d rather give you a few basic tips and demonstrate my way of working, and then try to empower you to paint your own way. I’ll be with you for your questions and stuck places, but you’re not a passenger here, I want you to drive your bus.

So, that’s one of the things that intimidated me about teaching this class: the possibility that I might not live up to people’s expectations of what a painting teacher should be. 

Another thing that makes teaching difficult for me is that the art side of my brain and the talking side seem to live a good distance apart from each other, like across town and not on a bus line, so I have trouble articulating what I’m doing with paint while I’m doing it. I usually do my best work without remembering thinking about it at all – in fact, I love not thinking. So please bear with me while I stumble around searching for words to express myself about making art!

The one circumstance where I intend to tell you firmly what to do is when I think you should STOP painting, and look at what you have done. If I yell STOP at you, it won’t be because you have done anything wrong – it’ll be because it’s time to take a break and notice what’s working well with your painting and think about how to make sure you don’t overwork it. I’d like stopping and looking at our own and each other’s work to be something we all get used to doing a few times each session.

Materials

I have paper, paint and brushes for you to work with. I also have canvasboards that you can buy from me for $2 each if you prefer, or you can bring your own media, but paper is enough. I have old crappy brushes, because I like working with them. I find that cheap materials free me from fear about ruining things. You are welcome to bring your own nice brushes if that’s what you prefer. I have some tabletop easels and some boards and tape you can use. You’re welcome to bring something of your own to paint on if you’d rather. We have a terribly small sink to rinse our brushes in, unfortunately, but I have some fairly large water containers. PLEASE be very careful not to spill paintwater on the floor! And no throwing paint. Sorry, it would be fun, but there are too many paintings in harm’s way in the gallery.

Lesson Plan

This is pretty loosey-goosey, as you will no doubt come to expect from me. I will show examples of landscapes, both photographic and painted.

Then I’ll share with you a painting I did fairly quickly, and show you approximately how I did it - and how a painting can be changed on the spur of the moment.

We’ll do a bit of color mixing, and I’ll share a few basic tips about that.

And then you’ll paint, from a photograph (yours or mine) or from memory or imagination. When using a photograph for reference, do not copy it. Try setting up your reference photo across the room where you can’t see the details. Better yet, take a look at it and then turn it over or put it somewhere you can’t see it at all. Improvise, make it different; make it your own vision. Don’t like the color of a house, the ground, the sky? Change it. Tree blocking the view you want? Get rid of it. You can literally move mountains if you choose to.

The Sky is NOT Blue

At a party last weekend, the subject of teaching classes came up AGAIN. I have been planning a new class since late last year. I want to encourage people to paint beyond what they think, and into the realm of what they intuit - or what they believe can be. Or what they want. I want to impart a message that despite persistent rumors, the sky isn't always blue, nor does it need to be.

I want to teach people how to turn a square of canvas or paper into a window on a world all their own. I want each of my students to have a painting they've done themselves, that's ready to frame by the end of the course.

Once again, at the party - which happened to be a celebration of a friend's first year in a new creative business - people wanted to hear about this class. They wanted to take my class. Why haven't I begun teaching it after lo these many moons? Fear. Fear of not being able to communicate. Talking has never been my strong suit. Talking while painting - oy.

Ironic, right? I've said I want to encourage people, when I myself suffer from a lack of courage.

"You've just got to shut that b_____ up!" my friend advised. "She dogged me the whole time I was planning my new business. Now she's sitting right on your shoulder, telling you you can't do this."

I'm guessing you've made the acquaintance of "the little voice." You know, the one that says, "You can't do that - who do you think you are anyway?"

So. Determined to shake her loose, I have ordered tabletop easels for my students. Thrown down the gauntlet, as it were!

Classes will commence at Saccarappa Art Collective in Westbrook on six Monday mornings from 10 until noon beginning on March 18. Contact the gallery (link in the nav bar) or me to sign up. I'll need at least five students prior to Saturday March 15. $120 per person, basic supplies included. I'll start with a short demo and some examples, then a bit of color theory. We'll go from there.

Lucky Pink Cat Mug

Monday morning while I was drinking coffee out of my lucky pink cat mug, the red phone rang! It was a commission, for a painting, maybe two or three. There was a strict color palette, and a deadline: the end of the week! I jotted down notes and disappeared into the studio, reminiscing nostalgically about the corporate world. Back in the day, I would roll out of bed and hop on a downtown bus or train, ready to drink my first cup of coffee and find out what creative magic was expected of me on that day. 

That afternoon I emailed the first image to the contact, and the client had changed his mind - now they only wanted one painting. And likely not that one! So, back to the easel. I still love my lucky pink cat mug. It's from Spindleworks.

Can you see the cat's face on it? At Spindleworks they do magic every day. If you live anywhere near Brunswick, Maine, I encourage you to visit. They have a new place in Hallowell, too.

Oh, the other painting? It's about done! :-)

Exhaling

People often ask me if I paint every day. My answer is, "Sometimes." For whatever reason, I've never been a person who handles routine well, but it's more than just that. I'll cruise along and then suddenly stumble on an empty well right where I'd been finding inspiration for weeks. Then - I do something else.

Sometimes kids' schedules or a family vacation need to take precedence. Other times, I intentionally concentrate on writing, so painting gets pushed aside. (It happens the other way around, too.) Plenty of times, I just feel used up, and need to wait for the well to fill up again.

Dry spells - that's what I thought they were - used to worry me deeply. In my first few years as a painter, every time I lost my creative momentum I wondered if I'd ever find it again. At last I noticed that, like a wandering cat, it always comes home eventually. So at that point I began to relax into a rhythm of producing, and - noticing.

I've come to appreciate my times of soaking up impressions. I realize that I do a lot of work during these times, consciously or unconsciously exploring compositions suggested in everything I see around me. In fact, I do a lot of painting while I drive - but I don't think I'll get pulled over for it, since it all takes place in my head. It's like breathing - taking in images, producing work.

Recently I lost a very dear old friend to cancer. I made a twelve-hour road trip to say good-bye to her, and then a month later drove the same road again to her memorial service. Twelve hours on the road is a long time to gather images and impressions. I knew the initial trip and its purpose changed me, but I had no idea how richly the road itself had blessed me until I returned home to a new purpose, a new format, new colors and textures. I took a really deep breath there on the road to my friend - and now I'm singing.

I wonder why I do this?

Gold Marsh (working) 30x40 acrylic on canvas

So, I get all ready to do something really abstract. I have a sketch I'm working from, something small I did a couple of years ago that I like, and now I'm going to go BIG (well, fairly big for me). And as I'm painting along, in the art zone, I'm putting in more and more stuff, and the image becomes more and more representational, less abstract. I'm mystified as to why I felt I needed to add detail. Now the painting is sort of half-and-half. I like balancing, normally, but I had planned to do something different. At this point I feel like I'm dealing with a split personality. The painting wants one thing, and I want another! I don't dislike this painting. (It's not signed, because it isn't done.) It's just that I was sure there was another painting in me wanting to get out and this one jumped the line somehow. Or else I'm simply afraid to permit myself to do abstract work, and that fear worked its way right into my art zone - yowie, I hope not!

Here's the sketch. I love the sketch. 9x12 acrylic on paper.