Monthly Archives: January 2015

Heading north in slow stages

Frozen paints… …lead to a frozen sketch. A week ago today, I drove up the Maine coast in slow stages. Maine is beautiful in winter, but it’s not the same kind of beauty as in August. Mid-coast Maine and Rochester have about the same winter temperatures. (As here, it gets colder the farther away from […]

Power of art

The symmetry of Thomas Hart Benton’s mural at the Power Vista balances the Iroquois and Europeans, who are also evenly matched in stature, equipment and clothing. When I was a child, we used to take field trips to the Niagara Power Vista. This is a glorified observation deck over the Niagara River. (Back in the […]

Weather notes

When I arrived in Waldoboro, it was hovering around a high of 27° with a low in the single digits, and no snow. A few weeks ago I quoted a sailing instructor: For God’s sake, learn how to read the weather! For home work, I made my sailing students keep a notebook chronicling the daily […]

Blizzard

Whose woods these are I think I know.  His house is in the village though;He will not see me stopping here  To watch his woods fill up with snow.  I knew weather was coming, but I had no choice but to stay; yesterday I had appointments all day in mid-coast Maine. When I finished at dusk, there […]

Oldies but Goodies

Adjust the pigments for 21st century tastes and this is a perfect explanation of how paired primaries are actually more versatile than having every pigment on your palette. I’d substitute quinacridone violet for alizarin crimson, and Hansa yellow for zinc yellow. This weekend, I was on the Schoodic Peninsula to test painting sites for my […]

Heading East Northeast

Winter on the Schoodic Peninsula. Having finished my work in Waldoboro for the moment (whew!) I’m heading for Acadia today—right into a winter storm. This is the kind of vagary my southern friends have no experience with, but which we northerners anticipate. My car is not brilliant at bad roads, but I’m carrying a shovel, […]

Those crazy circadian rhythms

Night falls much earlier in the winter. Once again I’m living off the grid in mid-coast Maine, and once again my friend is laughing at my peculiar habits. As P. points out, my eyelids start to droop exactly three hours after the sun sets, and I’m awake with the gloaming. This is apparently our pre-industrial […]

Maine Photo Project

The Haven, Bertrand H. Wentworth, undated, Monhegan Museum Most of us go to Maine and come back with hundreds—thousands—of photographs. Within a year of the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839 there were people taking pictures here, according to the Maine Historical Society. Katahdin Canoe, Leland Whipple, before 1900, hand-tinted lantern slide, Bangor Public Library […]

Beautiful, artistic Maine

Camden and Mt. Battie, by Carol L. Douglas Tomorrow morning, I’m going to the Belfast Creative Coalition’s annual meeting. I’m going because I’m interested in a Land Trust proposal, but mostly to satisfy my curiosity. Belfast is a city of 6,800 people, located in a county of about 38,000 people. Yet Belfast has enough art […]

The best-laid plans

Maine Ice Storm, Jamie Wyeth. My pal Toby warned me that I was driving into an ice storm. It stretched from coastal New Jersey to western Massachusetts. But I’ve been driving for almost 40 years (legally) and I drive a lot. In fact, I’d estimate that I’m one of those “million mile” drivers without infractions […]