Monthly Archives: April 2016

A little knowledge

A reader commented on Tuesday’s post: “I’ve rarely associated medieval art with joy. Fear of retribution, death, plague, and a hard life, yes. Joy, no.” We see so much medieval church art that we tend to forget the lighter moments caught in manuscript illuminations and genre paintings. Look at the illustrations from Le Régime du corps […]

Loop de loop

From the time we first picked up tools, mankind has carved both functional and non-functional items from wood. While wood carving is generally more humble than other techniques, at times it breaks out into high art. In the Middle Ages, for example, wooden narrative sculpture was used extensively in churches, and the great Renaissance sculptor Donatello worked in […]

Just sailing along

The forsythia blooming here is not the obedient, tightly pruned shrub of the suburbs, but the wild, sprawling mess of the shrub in its natural state. Along with spring flowers comes the first flush of license plates from away and visitors strolling along Main Street in Camden. I mentioned this to my pal Mary, who […]

Saving for a rainy day

OK, my Belfast workshop students: do you recognize the place? Yes, it’s the mouth of the Ducktrap River, where we spent a delightful day painting and Hal dove in to rescue an escaping umbrella. Meanwhile a rising tide absconded with his shoes. It was very different painting with a small cohort of PAPME painters on […]

And now, a word from our sponsors

Tomorrow morning I will head to the mouth of the Ducktrap River to paint with the northern chapter of Plein Air Painters of Maine (PAPME). This is the same group that is showing at University of Maine-Presque Isle, and I promised more information about that. The works of more than twenty Maine painters will be on […]

Country roads

US 1 is not a high-speed highway. It is what most Americans would call a secondary road. The small routes off it are back roads. None are straight and all pass through small hamlets, constantly-modulating speed limits, stop signs and frost heave. To further complicate driving, some Mainers think they should stay a good distance under […]