Door County to Onieda, American Tourism at its finest

"See the USA from your Chevrolet". Remember that tune? That's us. We're so quick we only point at the sites as they roll by. "See Lena, der it is. Get back in da car." Actually, we did stop at Niagra Falls enough for me to do a watercolor sketch and take a gazillion pictures. Niagra has been a tourist carnival since the first Jesuit priest fell on his knees an shouted "Hallelua", "I can see the honeymoon capital of the world." Boy was he right. Like 'Old Faithfull' a case of loving something to death.

There used to be eagles nesting, osprey fishing and bear snagging fish but all that is gone. Lunar Island, situated in the falls, used to have a 'moonbow' but it went away due to the urban lights. Bolts have been drilled into the face of the falls to hold the soft limestone from eroding, otherwise the falls would move upriver as it has over the millenia. Talk about moving real estate. The Hilton at Niagra and all the other honeymoon suites would be out of business.

Curiously, there is a lot of electrictiy produced here. They can make a million megawatts of power but they only do so at night to allow some/half, of the water to spill over the falls during the day for the tourists. What with all the demand for power and brownouts here in the east, I can feature where there may be a time in the future when they won't be able to afford the luxury of spilling water for tourists.

We passed miles and miles of coal plants along the Great Lakes. Coal for steel and coal for electricity. Pretty dirty. Funky too. Makes me wonder how the fishery is holding up. We met a couple fishermen that went out almost daily and caught their limit of Brown trout and Salmon. That was impressive. 5 to 25 lb'ers! So it must be OK?

One of the things that has impressed Betts and I is the amount of rural America. We think of the east as an urban landscape but that is hardly so as there are miles and miles of farms tucked away in the country. I was going to say hills but I have yet to see one for the last 2000 miles. The highest thing around are the bridges. As an ex-Ironworker I have been impressed with some of the bridges we've crossed coming through the Great Lakes. Hundreds of feet in the air and miles long they are impressive. But Gawd! this is flat country. We're definitely westerners. We've got mts., and valleys, rivers and canyons in our blood. I'm glad to have traveled the flat lands so I can appreciate the west better.

This quick sketch shows 'Horseshoe Falls' from the U.S side looking at the many storied hotels of Niagra Falls, C.A. Water from Lake Erie, dashes down cataracts falling 187' over the falls. Horseshoe Falls is 2200' wide. Altogether, Horseshoe, Bridal Veil and American Falls is almost a mile wide. A great mist from the falls drenches everything for miles including the tourists.

Door County Dairy Farms

Oh well, didn't get into the Penninsula Art School show this year. I'll try again next year. Can't imagine a better way than to paint my way across America. This trip will pave the way and I'll know where the spots I want to paint are. Maybe take a little extra time upfront so I can get more painting done. Get back to Door County and paint some of the farms before they disappear to developers.

After the reception at PAS. Betts and I went out to Bleys Tavern and got to know the locals. Met Tony Palezsh (don't think I got that right). Tony was born and raised here on one of the dairy farms. He operates an excavation business. I learned all about installing septic systems. Great stuff, sounds like they have as many or more regulations here as we do out west. Curious thing out here is that the Penninsula has very little topsoil and alot of sand stone base rock so quite a few septic systems have to be 'heap leach' systems.

The tavern was something out of a Walt Whitman poem, one room, pool table and juke box at the crossroads, with a baseball field in a corn patch stretching to the horizon. Could have been right out of the movie, Field of Dreams. Folks still suck cigarettes inside the tavern. Wonder how long that will hold out. Washington passed a law you can't smoke in public buildings or private establishments and smokers can't be nearer than 25' from the entrance of a building.

Drinks were incredibly cheap. 1$ beer on tap and $3 shots. Been a long time since I had a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Needless to say, Tony and I got to talking about personal stuff. He was an orphan raised by a Penninsula farm family. "Got to tinkin' dat I might just well write da Catlic sisters down Green Bay, ta see if de ol dame would have me. Turns out I went from da youngest to the oldest of de fambly." says Tony drawing off a filtered camel. Now he's got brothers and sisters. "Days plumbers too. Must be in de blood. Go figure." Bout that time, pool cues start clattering on the floor and the big Swede bartender, about 289 lbs of nice guy yells cross the counter, "Don't mind ye hevin some good time but ye better keep dem sticks at attention ya yayhoos." He's got a T shirt says he's a volunteer fireman. We share with him that the fire alarm went off the other night in our room and he says, " O det right, heard about dat, must have been over to Hanks place. I just rolled over when I got the call and went back to sleep. Figured it was jest one of dem dam new alarms. Dey go off from the humidity all the time. " I could tell he was a bit perturbed by these faulty systems. Gotta say though, I'd welcome a volunteer outfit like his what with the big shoulders and his friendly red cheeked mug he could pack a whole family out of a burning building, no problem.t

It was about sundown and the full moon was coming up across the corn fields. Took about 100 pictures with my digital picture machine. Drove around taking snaps of some of the best looking farms I've ever seen. Land O' Lakes farms. Serious milkers. Tidy as a pin. I'm impressed with the crops they grow on this thin soil. Gotta be some hardy souls. Dairy is about the hardest most dedicated work on the planet and these folks have been doing it for generations. Hope they can hold out. What with the developers paying big bucks for the land and most farms gobbled up by corporate interests I imagine the lifestyle is in jepordy like so many other natural resourced based lifestyles. Tony has a nephew that's going organic, hoping that nich market can keep the lifestyle going.

Penninsula Art School Paintout, Fish Cr., WI

The Penninsula Art School Paintout was a great success. Over $60,000 of pleinair paintings were sold at the Gala Reception. 36 artists spent the week painting in and around Fish Creek, WI which is a resort location of the tip of WI above Green Bay on Lake Michigan. This picture shows the auction of the featured artists that did the quick draw. Everyone was alloted 2 hrs to do a painting in the area. The public enjoyed watching and asking questions as the artists worked. The paintings were then auctioned. I believe an average of $800 per painting was made and atleast 15 paintings were sold. All together the PAS did well. I congratulate the volunteers that did a fine job putting on a stellar show for the artists and public.


I didn't get into the "Featured Artists" show but will try to jury in next year. I may get in this year if the quick draw painting I did, merits an award. The jury will decide who, from those that participated in the quick draw will warrant an invitation into the show next year. I've got my fingers crossed but I'm not too happy with the painting I did. Oh well, I gave it a shot and will try to jury in next year.
I did this painting yesterday. I also met the owners Dennis and Mary Bley. They had just purchased a Belgian mare and Dennis was seeing how she went. I noticed them working and stopped to visit and had a long talk about horses, horse logging and farming. Like most places logging and farming is disappearing in this area as it gets developed by tourism. Since S. Dakota It has been intriguing to compare the farms back east to those back home. Not very many

farmers out west do silage whereas out east everyone does it hence the fields and fields of corn and soybeans.
Many of the artists complain of all the green but I have been finding the colors delightful. Everything seems to be suffused with Cerulean .

The adventure to Maine continues.........

Time out for pictures of the grandkids. This little impadoodle is my grandson. Must be Kaiden but I can't really tell as the twins are identical to me. Couple of real Jokers. As you can see they're well taken care of. The adventure continues. We got to the Pennensula in N. Wisconsin and checked into our adobe only to wake up at 2a.m. to the annoying sound of a fire alarm in our room. Long story short, the humidity set of the fire alarm. Good way to meet the locals even if it is the local fire department.

Museum Adventures

My first opportunity on the trip was to stop at the Wild Bill Cody Museum to see a mural by John Clymer. Never did find the Clymer but enjoyed the collection of western art. I was especially glad to find Remington's plein air work, studies done on location in the west, far better than the studio work he did. The Plein air work of an artist is an opportunity to see the artist at work. How he interpreted the moment. The skill with which he applied the knowledge of technique he has, bereft of message ,yet containing the essence of the artist's character.


Stopping in Waterton, SD, to see my grandkids, I discovered the local art hero, Terry Redlin. WOW! Gotta be impressed with the level of commercial success an artist can have. A temple to Redlin's art, there is the Redlin Art Center, a 30,000 sq' marble mansion housing Redlin's paintings and prints, as well everything imaginable you can print his work on, from shower curtains to coffe mugs. It is easy for me to dislike the work of Terry Redlin. It suffers from what I call the 'log cabin syndrome', where an artist finds success at a particular thing, then never moves beyond that success. I do appreciate what he does say, in-as-much-as he opened my eyes to the horizontal light of the prairie. His drawings are exceptional, again, raw, spontaneous studies of the world around him in which his eye, technique and personality shine through.

Part of what has been so fun about this trip is discovering the art that lies hidden in the bowels of america. I had no idea what was to be found in Minneapolis, MN. Google found the Minneapolis Art Institute for me and an exhibit of Nordic work from 1700 to 1900. What else would you expect from the land of the Lutherens? Sponsor? Sons of Norway! Go figure! An exceptional show taking me from the classic style of Romantics in the vein of Bierstadt, heavy glazes and detailed brushwork to that of Edvard Muench, a.k.a. 'The Scream'. Here is a sample of an exceptional masterwork, probably 5'x8', by Carl Larson, may be the most reknown of the Scandanavian artists. Evidently this big painting was done outside on location. As you can see, you have to be one dedicated S.O.B. to paint in the land of the North. If you look closely he is wearing a pair of shaggy boots that would make a pair of Sorrel's look lightweight. This painting was shown at the Paris Salon. I'll bet is was the only snow scene in the show.
One of the things I have come to understand is my attachment to Realism. I have come to learn that Realism is a very relative term. Artists are shackled to the muse and that muse is nature, from which we derive our knowledge, whether that knowledge leads us down the path of abstraction or a literal interpretation of what we see. What is important is to be engaged and devoted to the process. To be the filter by which nature flows through the brush to the canvas, work that becomes frozen in time to be discovered by future aspirants. It reminds me quite a bit of the fossil footprints I saw in the desert of the Badlands or Borlund's Mt. Rushmore. That effort sure should be around for a while!

Wildlife of Wyoming

Sanpoil to South Dakota, painting my way to Maine

We discovered our first camp was a teepee on Rock Creek just west of Missoula, Mt. A pleasant way to start our adventure of painting my way across America.
Although it looks rough, we had a wonderful meal at the Stagecoach Inn that has been serving travelers four generations. We brought our own Cabernet from Sandpoint Winery that went well with both my Prime Rib and Bett's Dumpling Stew.

Saturday morning took us east to Yellowstone NP. I look forward to viewing sights painted by Bierstadt and Moran that I have always admired. I'm standing in front of Yellowstone Falls as seen from Inspiration Point. Unfortunately Moran painted from Artist's Point which was closed at the time due to construction. I could see the spot directily across the canyon from here. I have to say that his painting hanging in the National Gallery was an honest and true rendering of this marvelous landscape. I'm not sure of the exact demensions of his painting but it is grand, atleast 10'x 16' perhaps bigger. He did many watercolors of this sight that captured the extraordinairily complex colors that make up the canyon walls. His effort helped convince congress to make Yellowstone into one of the first National Parks.

Alfred Bierstadt of the Hudson River School, c. 1850, also painted in Yellowstone. Bierstadt also ventured out west to return to New York where he sold tickets to view his huge landscapes as if they were movie matinees. Although photography was in its infancy, artists such as these, using the skill of their hands and the magic of their imagination made a legend of the phenomenal beauty of our world, so much so, we have set such landscapes aside for future generations to appreciate. The artist makes the ordinary, extra ordinary and makes the extrordinary, timeless.


In such a fashion have Americans come to inheret such timelessness by the hand of Guston Borglund who dovoted his life to the sculpting of Mt. Rushmore. It is interesting to compare the efforts of those that have recorded nature as Moran and Bierstadt have done, to the altering of the landscape to memorialize man's place in time. Moran and Bierstadt memorialized nature using Art, Borglund memorialized Art by using Nature.















I captured the Absaroka's at sunrise from the east side of Yellowstone. 8"x24" oil







A sketch of Lamar River and Elk Mt in Yellowstone. 6"x18" oil

"Market Station" 11"x14" pleinair oil

I had a wonderful time at a paintout organized by Jim Quinn owner of Timberstand Gallery in the booming tourist town, Sandpoint Idaho.



Sandpoint is not the same town of 40 years ago when I broke my leg skiing at Schwietzer, the local ski hill. I hit the midway station and wrapped my shin bone on the ski patrols first aid station. They thought an avalanch had hit the building. OUCH!



Back then, it was a town of loggers and other hardy souls. Today it has been discovered by the wealthy and is becoming a destination resort with world class golf courses and high end homes and condos. I only hope they have an interest in decorating their abodes with quality artwork, especially mine.



10 artists from the US and Canada got together for 3 days to paint the town. I counted 70 paintings finished for the last days reception and show put on during the weekly Friday Artwalk in which the town becomes a parade of patrons through displays of artwork around town. Quite a crowd filed through Timberstand Gallery. It was also encouraging to see a few sales.



Jim puts on a great event. He engages the community. We painted at the Seasons Condominiums who went out of their way to make us comfortable. Painting in the direct sun on the beach the consierge provided bottled water, sun screen and even umbrellas. Later we had a private reception the tenants of the facility attended. The painting I did that day found a home with the 'penthouse' owner, a Ms. Kettle, who it turns out was quite familiar with the area I am from in Republic, WA, as her family is engaged in mining.



Being the Summer Solstice lots of things were going on at the same time in another part of town . http://www.shopthefrontier/ put up their road show down at the Old Mill.


I did this little sketch of the old elevator which is something of a landmark in the town. Abandoned there isn't much farming going on around this resort town.


The Arts Alliance was an interesting venue with demonstrations by sculptors and craftsman as well as a great band the "Kartel of Love" who played their own compositions which included a sax, trumpet, cello and even accordian. It was great to be surrounded by the energy of young people out to change the world. Reminded me of my long hair days. Seems each generation has a cause but they don't seem to change much, war and pollution. The same lines of protest repeated each generation. I'm certainly not being critical. Thank God someone is vocally opposing the war in Iraq and challenging the convention of our consumer lifestyle.


As I was driving to Hope, ID, I spotted this big bull moose in a slough. I stopped and got a few pictures untill he spotted me and the race was on for the car. I don't think he was chasing me just trying to figure out who was there as I was down wind and moose don't see too well. I didn't get to set up my easle but I got some great digital pics. Holy Smokes! Moose sure are big!

This is what attracts folks to the area. Wildlife in your backyard, ski hill and the beautiful Lake Pend O'rielle, pronounced Ponderay.

One of the first presence of the white man was the Hudson Bay Trading Post built by the famous explorer of the West, David Thompson who built the Kutunai Trading Post at Hope, Idaho. Today the post is memorialized by a granite monolith attesting to the white man's presence in 1809. Not very long ago. I guess the area could have easily been part of Canada if Hudson Bay had done things a little different. We've come a long way in 200 years and not all of it for the better. It is amazing to me that we have gone from what was a wilderness to our modern consumer lifestyle in so little time. Makes me wonder where we will be in another 200 years. I hear China is building a coal fired generator a day. Hope folks will be able to breadth by then.

Young people singing their hearts out about the sad condition of the world, affluent tenants living in million dollar condos, the artist stands in the middle observing, not judging but noting the significant difference and ferreting out the substance of life as our life ticks away. The present becomes the past we wonder as Gaugain did "Who are we, where have we been and where are we going?"

I'm heading out on an adventure to Dessert Isle of Maine to paint and drive horses. I've got my pochade packed with blank canvas and stocked up on paint supplies. I'm looking forward to maritime subjects and meeting new folks in a part of the country where there is plenty of history that is much older than that in the west.

Willows, 3, oil, 18"x30"