On a mist-filled gray day, what better than a memory painting from foggy Lubec, Maine? This low tide view across the flats was my first impression on my first day in Lubec many years ago. I had arrived toward dark, and everything was shrouded in mist, rain and fog the next morning. Toward 10am I was startled to see the beginnings of the bay and salt water – it seemed to stretch out for miles! I spent most of that first week traipsing around with my camera shooting the seaweed, stones, and meanders of salt water and green slime. I knew I was hooked, better than any fish. Enjoy.
There’s always one that jumps out front, ready to proclaim the arrival of fall. This view of one red tree at an old quarry says yes, autumn is coming, even if it feels late this year. I always anticipate the moment. Enjoy.
Yes, my favorite season has to be fall. It isn’t just the range of colors, but the return of cooler nights and more moderate days. This small painting sums up the glowing light of autumn, when gold and citrine drench the woods and air. Enjoy!
It’s a familiar trail through Purgatory Charm. You start in open sunlight and descend to the bottom of the damp, boulder strewn, rock-walled chasm. Warm to cool, easy to difficult, bright to mysterious. And it happens quickly. No matter how many times I visit, it thrills me. So, when I started this little painting at the beginning of the week, I thought I knew where I was going. But from the first stroke, something was new. The nearly black shadows were suggestive enough to stand on their own, so I concentrated on the sunlit trees and foreground ledge and boulders. A few scraped out trunks and branches were enough to say “trees.” The white of the paper left of center implied sunlight deeper in the woods. I decided to call it finished – partly because it felt fresh and new, partly because the abstractness of it echoed the abstract quality of this particular location. Enjoy!
Technical painting notes: I used a smooth rag printmaking paper (primed with shellac both sides). Winsor/Newton Liquin Impasto medium added substance and translucency to the paint, and sped the drying. A smallish palette knife provided control and some great accidents, A silicone scraper was used to remove paint for trunks and a few limbs. I liked the contrast of bare paper in some places with thick paint elsewhere.
I’ve been thinking about Pine Barrens I’ve visited – on Cape Cod and up in Northern New Hampshire. They always have their own stark poetry of loose, sandy soil and trees struggling to survive. I think of the quiet, the sounds of insects buzzing. At times these woods can feel haunted, perhaps because one senses the extraordinary number of years it takes to build such an environment – mountains rising, then being worn away until only dense, deep sand remains. The exquisite smell of pine needs perfumes the air, and all you want to do is keep breathing….enjoy.
TM9536 Summer Afternoons 30×80 diptych, oil on panel
Summer Afternoons
One breath in,
One breath out
I stand, look again
Ponder this summer opus
A diptych of breath
Rippling with breeze
And leaves, the air
So humid, so soft
Colors want to melt
Blur into creek
And clouds as they
Languidly play across
twenty-four hundred
square inches
Technical painting notes and close-up details: Summer Afternoons is a diptych painted on two birch-faced slabs. I used several coats of alkyd primer (sanded to a velvet finish). The initial blocking in of shapes was done with a soft rubber roller and thinned black and burnt umber oil paints. The paint surface was manipulated with solvents and silicone scrapers, then allowed to dry. Subsequent glazes and more roller strokes defined the vegetation, with limited use of soft brushes. I used mostly Liquin impasto medium to make the paints more transparent.
TM9536 Summer Afternoons – detail from upper left
TM9536 Summer Afternoons – detail from upper center
TM9536 Summer Afternoons – detail from left of center
TM9536 Summer Afternoons – detail from center bottom edge
TM9536 Summer Afternoons – detail from lower right edge
TM9536 Summer Afternoons – detail from right side
Below are two views of the diptych in progress.
TM9536 Summer Afternoons, in progress, June 2021
TM9536 Summer Afternoons, work in progress, early August 2021
TM9536 Summer Afternoons 30×80 diptych, oil on panel, completed late August 2021
